The Listenwise Writing Assessor

We are excited to announce the release of the Writing Assessor on Listenwise! The Writing Assessor is a new built-in tool that instantly analyzes student writing, providing key insights on ELP levels and areas of improvement to inform teacher feedback. This article will provide more information about what it is and how it works.

What the Writing Assessor Does

How to find the Writing Assessor

How the Writing Assessor Works

What Students Will See

What the Writing Assessor Does

The Writing Assessor offers teachers a lift in providing personalized feedback on student writing. It leverages the strengths of AI, while also optimizing the strengths that teachers bring to the assessment task. For example, AI is good at quickly analyzing writing with reference to rubric criteria and framing targeted feedback based on specific examples. Teachers know individual students, their progress over time, and the goals of recent instruction, and they can apply professional judgment regarding where best to focus students’ next steps in working on their writing. Teachers can also add feedback on the accuracy of the writing and its fulfillment of the task. 

The Writing Assessor provides feedback on writing skills rather than comprehension. While focused on writing in light of English language proficiency, it can provide feedback that is relevant to students at any ELP level, including native speakers. The Writing Assessor can significantly reduce the time teachers spend on providing useful feedback, while also helping them elevate the quality of the feedback to improve student writing. It is intended to be used to draft feedback that is reviewed by the teacher, who may make adjustments, before sharing it with students. 

How to find the Writing Assessor

The Writing Assessor is available on Listenwise written assignments. The Discussion Theme questions provided on every lesson are featured as Writing Prompts when creating an assignment. You will choose one Writing Prompt for an assignment, which can then be analyzed by the Writing Assessor when reviewing student submissions. Learn more about the assignment creation process here.

When reviewing students’ submissions, the Writing Assessor is available under the Writing Prompt response. See this article to learn how to find and review student work, and this article has tip for providing feedback on student work.

How the Writing Assessor Works

The Writing Assessor uses AI to analyze student writing in alignment with standard ELP frameworks. It assesses students' writing skills, not their comprehension of the content. 

It provides the following information: 

Writing ELP Level: English proficiency (ELP) level on a scale of 1-6 demonstrated by the writing sample.

Dimension Scores: Analysis of dimensions of language including the following:

• Linguistic Complexity (Text Level) – Organization, coherence, and style
• Language Forms (Sentence Level) – Sentence patterns and grammatical structures
• Vocabulary Usage (Word/Phrase Level) – Word choice aligned with purpose and topic

Click the arrow to read more about the writing analysis by dimension: 

Personalized Feedback: Strengths in the writing and suggestions for improvement based on the writing assessment. Teachers can easily edit and add additional comments to further customize feedback for each student. 

What Students Will See

After you submit your feedback to students, they can go into their assignment and review the writing feedback. They will also see feedback you left on the comprehension questions, an assignment score, and/or overall assignment feedback.