Frontiers in Explainable Automated Writing Evaluation

Abstract

Explainability is a crucial component of natural language processing（NLP）systems. Explanation is communication, and research on explainability is expected to address notions such as communicative goals and common grounding. Automated Writing Evaluation（AWE）is an ideal field to contribute to such research. AWE refers to NLP tasks designed to support human learners by evaluating the quality of text produced in educational contexts, such as written answers to questions and argumentative essays, and providing constructive feedback. Since explanations are vital in educational assessment, pedagogical literature is rich with insights that can facilitate research on explainability in AWE systems. In this paper, what style of explanations are pedagogically suitable and technologically feasible at each layer of language production, ranging from content planning to surface realization, is explored and open research issues are identified to encourage researchers to enter this emerging field.