ABSTRACT
Discourse coherence is an essential criterion for essay evaluation as illustrated in scoring rubric criteria for standardized writing assessments. 1 In this chapter we discuss different perspectives that aim to define text coherence; the tangible criteria that illustrate discourse coherence quality in scoring rubrics that motivate the need for including these analysis in automated essay scoring systems; linguistic properties in essay data that contribute to discourse coherence; and a description of how these features can be modeled to build a system that generates coherence quality scores for student and test-taker essay writing.
