Abstract:

Learning a second or foreign language is not a favourite among second language students. The difficulties in understanding the language has made students demotivated in learning it especially when it comes to writing in the second language. To this, second language teachers play the most significant roles in helping and motivating students to learn and acquire the language. Among the four skills in English Language, writing is considered the most difficult one. As such, being a second language writing teacher is not an easy task since the students are not proficient enough in second language, what more in writing. One of the more tedious aspects of teaching is to provide adequate feedback to students especially when it comes to writing. It can be a long process particularly if you want to give adequate feedback to students on those complex writing tasks. This is common among teachers in higher and upper secondary education. The process completely bogs down when it comes to 30 to 40 students in a class as is more often the case in Malaysia. I found that using automatic scoring systems such as BETSY has helped students and me. B.E.T.S.Y., Bayesian Essay Test Scoring sYstem, is a windows-based program that classifies texts based on trained material. It was designed for automated essay scoring and can be applied to any text classification task. BETSY is not the only system available, but it is portable and easily installed in our university’s Windows-based language labs and into the students’ own laptops. I have used BETSY in my own ESOL and academic writing classes to provide feedback on writing tasks as well as to promote self-paced and self-regulated learning. Students are generally satisfied as BETSY helps them to improve their writing in language learning and academic purposes. It really does pays to have Aunt BETSY in class!