Content Importance Models for Scoring Writing From Sources

Beata Beigman Klebanov, Nitin Madnani, Jill Burstein, Swapna Somasundaran

Abstract: Selection of information from external sources is an important skill assessed in educational measurement. We address an integrative summarization task used in an assessment of English proficiency for nonnative speakers applying to higher education institutions in the USA. We evaluate a variety of content importance models that help predict which parts of the source material should be selected by the test-taker in order to succeed on this task.