Glossary

This site is in English. These terms stay in Portuguese because translating them would name something else.

ENEMExame Nacional do Ensino Médio

Brazil's national secondary-education exam, taken by millions of students each year and used for admission to most public universities. Its essay is scored against five competences, which are what the Automated Essay Scoring track predicts.

competênciacompetence

One of the five dimensions an ENEM essay is scored on, each worth 0 to 200 points in steps of 40. They cover command of the formal written norm, grasp of the prompt, organization of argument, cohesion, and the intervention proposal. A score is five numbers, not one.

redaçãoessay

The handwritten argumentative essay an ENEM candidate produces in response to a prompt. In this dataset each one appears as a photograph of the page, cropped to the written answer.

textos motivadoresmotivating texts

The short supporting texts printed with an ENEM essay prompt, such as statistics, excerpts and cartoons, that a candidate reads before writing. They are part of what the prompt asks, not background: an essay is scored partly on what it does with them. The Automated Essay Scoring track supplies all three alongside the prompt.

gabaritoanswer key

The official key giving the correct option for each question on a multiple-choice exam. It is what a marked sheet is compared against. The Answer Sheet Detection track predicts what the student marked instead, right or wrong.

cartão-respostaanswer sheet

The printed sheet on which a candidate fills bubbles to record their answers. The Answer Sheet Detection track works from scans of these, including the smudges, erasures, and double marks that real sheets carry.