The Silicon Tutor

Spurred by recent developments in information processing, a new class of technologies has emerged capable of evaluating the quality of prosaic texts. Accomplishing, through sheer number crunching, feats once attributable only to intelligence and intuition, these "automated essay scorers" possess the ability to simulate the judgments that experienced readers make when assessing written prose. Although their practical applications are obvious, the use of automated technologies to teach and assess writing remains a hotly contested issue. How reliable are automated essay scorers, and what place, if any, can they legitimately occupy in the writing curriculum? The Silicon Tutor addresses these questions and explores the evolution of intelligent writing aides from their prototypical beginnings nearly half a century ago to contemporary examples such as e-rater and the Intelligent Essay Assessor(TM). With an emphasis on the pedagogical utility of automated writing aides, The Silicon Tutor should prove useful to writing instructors, educational administrators, or anyone interested in teasing apart fact from fiction regarding the potential and limitations of these nascent technologies.