The "TOEFL® Essentials"™ test is a new English language proficiency test in the "TOEFL"® family of assessments. It measures foundational language skills and communication abilities in academic and general (daily life) contexts. The test covers the four language skills of reading, listening, writing, and speaking and is intended…

The e-rater[R] automated essay scoring system is used operationally in the scoring of TOEFL iBT[R] independent essays. Previous research has found support for a 3-factor structure of the e-rater features. This 3-factor structure has an attractive hierarchical linguistic interpretation with a word choice factor, a grammatical convention within a…

This paper proposes an alternative content measure for essay scoring, based on the "difference" in the relative frequency of a word in high-scored versus low-scored essays. The "differential word use" (DWU) measure is the average of these differences across all words in the essay. A positive value indicates the essay is using…

Alternative approaches are discussed for use of e-rater[R] to score the TOEFL iBT[R] Writing test. These approaches involve alternate criteria. In the 1st approach, the predicted variable is the expected rater score of the examinee's 2 essays. In the 2nd approach, the predicted variable is the expected rater score of 2 essay responses by the…

This study investigated the scoring of the Test of English as a Foreign Language[TM] Internet-based Test (TOEFL iBT[TM]) Speaking section by bilingual or multilingual speakers of English and 1 or more Indian languages. We explored the extent to which raters from India, after being trained and certified, were able to score the Speaking section for…

This report evaluates the construct coverage of the e-rater[R[ scoring engine. The matter of construct coverage depends on whether one defines writing skill, in terms of process or product. Originally, the e-rater engine consisted of a large set of components with a proven ability to predict human holistic scores. By organizing these capabilities…