Patent ID: 7720675
Filing Date: 2010-05-18
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A computer-implemented method of evaluating the coherence of an essay, the method comprising: receiving an essay with a computer, wherein the essay comprises one or more discourse elements and a plurality of text segments; annotating the one or more discourse elements of the essay; generating a text segment vector for each text segment corresponding to a discourse element using a vector-based method of random indexing with the computer; identifying a plurality of essay dimensions with the computer, each representing relatedness of a text segment to an aspect of the essay, each dimension having an associated dimension score that provides a measure of said relatedness, the essay dimensions including a first dimension measuring relatedness between a first text segment corresponding to a first discourse element and a second text segment corresponding to a second discourse element, and a second dimension measuring relatedness between text segments within a discourse element; measuring semantic similarity with respect to at least one text segment based on the essay dimensions using a support vector machine to calculate a first dimension score associated with the first dimension and a second dimension score associated with the second dimension; and generating one or more values representing a coherence level to the essay based on the first dimension score and the second dimension score with respect to the at least one text segment.