The paper introduces HiFTS, a unified autoregressive framework that generates hierarchical chain-of-thought (CoT) feedback before predicting trait-level and holistic scores for multi-trait automated essay scoring. HiFTS distills rubric-grounded CoT feedback from a teacher large language model and trains student models to jointly produce feedback and scores, employing Group Relative Policy Optimization to balance score agreement, calibration, feedback quality, and structural validity. The authors also present CFMS-34, a new Chinese multi-trait AES dataset, and demonstrate that HiFTS achieves strong scoring performance while producing coherent, rubric-aligned feedback on CFMS-34 and ASAP++.
By Shihang Yang, Sanwoo Lee, Ningning Zhao, Yunfang Wu
arXiv:2607. 19219v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have been widely applied to automated essay scoring (AES) and automated feedback generation (AFG).
By Xuefeng Jin, Jiashuo Zhang, Teng Cao, Bin Yang
Large language models (LLMs) have been widely applied to automated essay scoring (AES) and automated feedback generation (AFG). However, existing studies rely primarily on prompt engineering or supervised fine-tuning, while systematic research on reinforcement learning (RL) post-training and automated evaluation of feedback quality remains limited.
arXiv:2602. 01747v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Automated Essay Scoring (AES) plays a crucial role in education by providing scalable and efficient assessment tools.
By Hongseok Choi, Serynn Kim, Wencke Liermann, Jin Seong, Jin-Xia Huang
arXiv:2606. 10327v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Automated Essay Scoring (AES) systems must judge interdependent discourse elements (e.
By Ali Keramati, Mark Warschauer
The paper introduces SWIM, a task that frames student writing simulation as proficiency‑conditioned essay generation. It evaluates prompting, supervised fine‑tuning, and reinforcement learning for aligning generated essays with student proficiency profiles, using automated essay scoring as a metric. Results show that prompting alone offers limited control, while supervised fine‑tuning and reinforcement learning significantly improve alignment across content, lexical, grammatical, and organizational traits, though low‑proficiency writing remains difficult to replicate.
By Heejin Do, Jakub Kontak, Mrinmaya Sachan
The paper introduces a cost‑aware framework that treats each prompt type as an arm in a multi‑armed bandit controller, enabling adaptive selection of optimal prompting strategies during inference for automated essay scoring. Experiments on IELTS Writing Task 2 essays demonstrate that this bandit-driven approach achieves comparable scoring accuracy to exhaustive grid search while reducing LLM calls by 78.4%. The study also presents the first cost‑reliability learning curves for essay scoring, offering actionable insights for educational technology platforms balancing operational costs against assessment validity.
By Olga Manakina, Igor Bogdanov
arXiv:2607. 15829v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Automated essay scoring (AES) enables scalable assessment and timely feedback but remains challenged by transformer input-length limitations, which can cause information loss when processing long essays.
By Haowei Hua
arXiv:2607. 14524v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This study presents WrAFT, a Writing Assessment and Feedback Tool, that delivers both accurate and reliable scores and effective comprehensive feedback to argumentative essays.
By Adnan Labib, Yixuan Huang, Jiahui Wu, John Maurice Gayed, Zheng Yuan, Qiao Wang
arXiv:2606. 20152v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) have substantially transformed Automated Essay Scoring (AES), yet the internal mechanisms underlying LLM-based scoring remain poorly understood.
By Jiaxu Zuo, Mu You, Kaixin Lan, Tao Fang, Yujia Huo, Henghua Shen, Lidia S. Chao, Derek F. Wong
The paper investigates what gradient similarity measures in data attribution for large language models. By independently varying task and answer format in supervised fine‑tuning benchmarks, the authors show that gradient alignment is driven by answer format rather than task semantics, with strong alignment for shared formats and none for differing formats. This pattern persists across training stages, model sizes, and families, and is evident in the selections of the LESS data‑selection method, which over‑represents its own answer format.
By Sunwoo Kim, Seokwon Jung, Sohyung Kim, Seong Joon Oh, Alice Oh
arXiv:2604. 07102v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Activation-based steering enables inference-time personalization of large language models, but its effects in educational applications are not well understood.
By Yongchao Wu, Aron Henriksson