AWA

Analytical Writing Assessment

The Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) section of the test consists of two essays. In the first, the student must analyze an argument and in the second the student must analyze an issue. Each essay must be written within 30 minutes and is scored on a scale of 0–6. The essay is scored by a human and by a computer program; each scorer marks the essay with a grade from 0 to 6. If the two scores differ by one point or less, they are averaged. If the two scores differ by more than one point, the essay is scored a third time by a human reader.[5]

The first scorer is "IntelliMetric", a proprietary software by Vantage Learning, which purports to analyze creative writing and syntax by using a number of linguistic and structural features.The second and third readers are humans, who evaluate the quality of the examinee's ideas and his ability to organize, develop, and express ideas with relevant support. While mastery of the conventions of written English factor into scoring, minor errors are expected, and evaluators are instructed to be "sensitive"[clarification needed] to examinees whose first language is not English.

Each of the two essays in the Analytical Writing part of the test is graded on a scale of 0 (the minimum) to 6 (the maximum):
 0 An essay that is totally illegible or obviously not written on the assigned topic.
 1 An essay that is fundamentally deficient.
 2 An essay that is seriously flawed.
 3 An essay that is seriously limited.
 4 An essay that is merely adequate.
 5 An essay that is strong.
 6 An essay that is outstanding.

Over the last 3 years concluding in March 2011, the mean score has been