Potential Applications of Latent Semantic Analysis to Writing Analysis

Abstract

Manually analysing and evaluating writing can be a time consuming, difficult, subjective and sometimes error-prone task. Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) provides a new technique for performing a variety of useful semantic analyses. LSA serves both as an approximate psychological theory of aspects of human word and passage meaning and as a practical tool for research and applications. It can evaluate the conceptual content of writing, including, the kind, quality and quantity of semantic information expressed and the conceptual coherence of arguments presented. In this chapter we provide an overview of LSA and then discuss four techniques for performing automatic analysis of the content of written information using LSA, both from the standpoint of teaching expository writing and from the standpoint of its analysis.