Thematic control and criteria-based assessment of foreign language writing skills using artificial intelligence technologies
Authors: Evstigneev M. N. 
Published: October 2024

Importance. Currently, there is a tendency that when teaching a foreign language, teachers are increasingly resorting to the use of artificial intelligence technologies to plan training sessions, generate educational content, as well as to conduct automated testing of formed communication skills. The monitoring of academic achievements and assessment is one of the key components of the organization of the educational process. Traditional methods of control and assessment require significant time and labor-intensive costs from the teacher, while artificial intelligence technologies make it possible to simplify and automate routine tasks: check tests and written papers, analyze them and identify mistakes, provide feedback. Thanks to the integration of natural language processing (NLP) technologies into chatbots and adaptive intelligent learning systems, it becomes possible on a daily basis to check texts created by students, evaluate them from the point of view of grammatical and lexical correctness, as well as identify stylistic and factual errors in real time. The purpose of this work is to test the applicability of artificial intelligence technologies for thematic control and criteria-based assessment of educational achievements using the example of productive and reproductive writing.

Research Methods. In carrying out this study, the following groups of methods were used: theoretical methods aimed at familiarizing with scientific and methodological literature on the topic of research, analysis and classification of theoretical and methodological material for conducting thematic control and criterion assessment in foreign language classes, as well as empirical methods that allowed modeling pedagogical control and assessment processes using artificial intelligence technologies, observation, analysis and description of the results obtained.

Definition of Concepts. The main concepts used in the study are “control of educational results” and its variety “thematic control”, “criterion assessment”.

Results and Discussion. In the course of the study, various types of monitoring educational results using artificial intelligence technologies were considered: preliminary, current, intermediate, thematic, final. The choice of thematic control is due to the opportunity to trace its applicability within the framework of a single lesson in a foreign language and identify the main difficulties in using this form of control. The following criteria for evaluating writing skills are used to evaluate learning outcomes using artificial intelligence technologies: a) the structure of the written text; b) compliance with the main topic; c) coherence; d) relevance; e) grammatical correctness; f) lexical correctness; g) ethics of writing and stylistic correctness.

Conclusion. Artificial intelligence technologies at the present stage have a high degree of adaptability and include a wide range of software and hardware solutions that allow for such important pedagogical procedures as monitoring educational achievements and evaluation in accordance with user-defined evaluation criteria. The obtained results are proposed to be used in research devoted to the study of modern methods of monitoring educational achievements in the methodology of teaching foreign languages using artificial intelligence technologies.