Design of an Automated Essay Grading (AEG) System in Indian Context

Automated essay grading or scoring systems are no more a myth, but they are a reality. As of today, the human written (not hand written) essays are corrected not only by examiners/teachers but also by machines. The TOEFL exam is one of the best examples of this application. The students' essays are evaluated both by human and web based automated essay grading system and then the average is taken. Many researchers consider essays as the most useful tool to assess learning outcomes, implying the ability to recall, organize and integrate ideas, the ability to supply, merely than identify interpretation and application of data. Automated Writing Evaluation Systems, also known as Automated Essay Assessors, might provide precisely the platform we need to explicate many of the features those characterize good and bad writing and many of the linguistic, cognitive and other skills those underline the human capability for both reading and writing. They can also provide time-to-time feedback to the writers/students which can improve their writing skill. A meticulous research of last couple of years has helped us to understand the existing systems which are based on Al & Machine Learning techniques and finding the loopholes and at the end to propose a system, which will work under Indian context, presently for English language influenced by local languages. Currently most of the essay grading systems are used for grading pure English essays or essays written in pure European languages. In India we have almost 21 recognized languages and influence of these local languages in English, is very much here. Newspapers in sometimes print like "Now the time has come to say 'albida' (good bye) to monsoon." Due to the influence of local languages and English written by non-native English speakers (i.e., Indians) the result of TOEFL exams has shown lower scores against Indian students (also Asian students). This paper focuses on the existing automated essay grading systems, basic technologies behind them and proposes a new framework to overcome the problems of influence of local Indian languages in English essays while correcting and by providing proper feedback to the writers.