The text grader module sorts the documents according to their level of similarity with certain selected documents; to what extent do they resemble the exemplars (good assignments) or the counter-exemplars (poor assignments).

Computer assisted grading works as follows. First of all, several assignments have to be examined, with the intention of grading these assignments as "good to very good" or as "poor/inadequate". The text grader program provides help in finding these exemplars and counter-exemplars by means of an initial score. This initial score is a prima facie assessment by the computer, based on similarities in word use within the entire group of assignments. These initial scores are visible in the column "Init".

The teacher examines those assignments that appear to be the most likely candidates for a "good" or a "poor" grade. Each assignment examined in this way can be provided with a mark in the form of a letter (in the "M" column). The letters that are available are A through to F (6 grades), although the form of the marking is at the discretion of the user who may, for example, prefer to use only "pass/fail" (A or B) or "good/average/below average/poor" (A, B, C or D). In addition, the good assignments (assignments that fulfil an exemplar function) are marked with a +, and the poor (counter-exemplars) with a - in the "E" column.

Once several exemplars (marked with a +) and several counter-exemplars (marked with a -) have been found, the recalculation key can be pressed. The effect of this is to assign each document an "assessment score". This score indicates the extent to which each document on the list resembles the exemplars (with respect to word use) and the extent to which they deviate from the counter-exemplars. The list of documents are now ordered according to this assessment score. The assessment scores are visible in the column "Score".

The list of documents so produced must now be put to the test by the teacher. The teacher should look at several assignments at the top of the list and those at the bottom and find as many as possible clearly good and clearly poor assignments. All the scores can then be calculated once again (by clicking the button) which then shows the extent to which the original ordering has been altered. This process can be repeated several times, if desired, until the teacher is satisfied that the listing is as good as final and forms a suitable basis for grading the entire group.

At this stage, further refinements can take place: the exact boundaries between A, B, C etc can now be established. Even if the list has been determined, it is often necessary to examine assignments with a borderline evaluation. Once the borders have been fixed, the other, as yet not evaluated assignments, belonging to the relevant part of the list can be graded by simply pressing the key. Finally, the program can be ended and the list of grades can be processed and/or printed out. The A's, B's and C's can be replaced by an actual mark if so desired (for example, an A could stand for a 10, a B for a 7 and a C for a 4), or the assessment scores can be used to calculate percentages.