Automated Japanese essay scoring system:jess

We have developed an automated Japanese essay scoring system named jess. The system evaluates an essay from three features: (1) rhetoric - ease of reading, diversity of vocabulary, percentage of big words (long, difficult words), and percentage of passive sentences; (2) organization - characteristics associated with the orderly presentation of ideas, such as rhetorical features and linguistic cues; (3) contents - vocabulary related to the topic, such as relevant information and precise or specialized vocabulary. The final evaluated score is calculated by deducting from a perfect score assigned by a learning process using editorials and columns from the Mainichi Daily News newspaper. A diagnosis for the essay is also given. Our system does not need any essays graded by human experts.