Marking Mate - A free web-based academic writing feedback tool for East Asian learners of English

Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) has been the subject of much research in recent years, including some focus on how it can be used to provide formative writing feedback. However, there is a lack of freely available AWE software, and commercial options are not tailored to the needs of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) learners in an East Asian context. In response to this situation, our presentation will introduce a piece of web-based open-source academic writing software called 'Marking Mate', which is currently under development at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) in China. Although not as sophisticated as commercial AWE software, it allows users to input texts, such as essays or reports, and receive instant formative feedback on common stylistic issues for East Asian learners, as well as on some grammar problems. Issues that users are currently able to search for include: emotional, informal or cliched language, use of contractions, lack of hedging language, excessively repeated vocabulary, conjunctions at the start of sentences, the presence of many consecutive short sentences, redundant phrasing, personal pronoun usage, question and exclamation usage, citations not matching references, and uncountable noun plurals. Our main focus has been on areas that Microsoft Word does not cover adequately. In our presentation, we will describe and demonstrate the software, summarize feedback received from a brief trial with XJTLU teachers, discuss how the program could be incorporated into classroom teaching, and outline plans for future development and testing.