Using k-Shot Prompting with Large k for the Automated Scoring of a German Written Elicited Imitation Test

Malte Sternik, Ronja Laarmann-Quante, Anastasia Drackert


Abstract
This paper explores the application of a Large Language Model (LLM) using k-shot prompting with large k for automatically scoring a German Written Elicited Imitation Test (WEIT), a test for assessing literacy-dependent procedural knowledge in German as a foreign language. In this test, test-takers are briefly presented with written sentences which they then have to reproduce in writing as accurately as possible. The responses are scored on an ordinal scale which differentiates between different types of errors (e.g. lexical vs. grammatical). We find that with increasing k (in a range from 1 to 700) accuracy increases significantly but it also depends on the drawn sample and varies across different runs of the same prompt. Overall, the k-shot setting which relies on in-context learning without being provided with the scoring rubric outperforms a baseline where only the scoring rubric is provided to the model. However, the LLM does not outperform previous results based on rule-based or BERT-based models.
Anthology ID:
2026.bea-1.20
Volume:
Proceedings of the 21st Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications (BEA 2026)
Month:
July
Year:
2026
Address:
San Diego, California, USA
Editors:
Ekaterina Kochmar, Bashar Alhafni, Stefano Bannò, Marie Bexte, Jill Burstein, Andrea Horbach, Ronja Laarmann-Quante, Anais Tack, Victoria Yaneva, Zheng Yuan
Venues:
BEA | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
272–280
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-acl-workshops/2026.bea-1.20/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Malte Sternik, Ronja Laarmann-Quante, and Anastasia Drackert. 2026. Using k-Shot Prompting with Large k for the Automated Scoring of a German Written Elicited Imitation Test. In Proceedings of the 21st Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications (BEA 2026), pages 272–280, San Diego, California, USA. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Using k-Shot Prompting with Large k for the Automated Scoring of a German Written Elicited Imitation Test (Sternik et al., BEA 2026)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-acl-workshops/2026.bea-1.20.pdf