Teaching ELA in the AI Era: AI Will Make Writing More, Not Less, Challenging

Photo by Karolina Grabowska

For teachers of ELA and writing, ChatGPT seems like our calculator moment. The debut of the calculator terrified teachers who feared it might erode students’ math skills. And debates continue about whether different kinds of calculators help, hinder, or play no role in student learning in math. [1]

Yet a calculator only makes some aspects of solving math problems easier. Even if you use a graphing calculator, you still need to know how to solve problems. The only functions calculators completely automate are the four functions of basic arithmetic: adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.

 For teachers of ELA and writing, ChatGPT seems like our calculator moment. But, in reality, it’s somewhere between an extinction-level event and a “Why bother?” moment.

But, in reality, for teachers of writing, ChatGPT is more like a cross between an extinction-level event and an invitation for students to ask “Why bother?” in every class. Why work on vocabulary when Grammarly can suggest a better word? Why learn grammar or punctuation when Microsoft Word or Grammarly will correct your writing?[2]

And why bother to learn how to write when you can type a sentence in a box and get effortless pages of writing in seconds?

And you need to have an answer for these questions. Not to cheerlead students, but to help them navigate a world of shrinking jobs and shriveling attention spans. And a world where every piece of content, from feature articles to cover letters, will soon sound like it came from the same machine.

 For teachers of ELA and writing, ChatGPT seems like our calculator moment. But, in reality, it’s somewhere between an extinction-level event and a “Why bother?” moment.

Player Pianos vs Piano Players

Photo by Rafael Vargas. Barcelona Music Museum

Think of the contrast between a player piano and a piano player. One was a mechanical curiosity, something you parked in a parlor and played for entertainment. The player piano could tackle any piece of music with precision. But it also played every piece of music with a predictable sameness.

Our students must become piano players to stand out in a world of mechanical player pianos. Ironically, AI-generated writing will make more important writers’ abilities to learn the rules and know when they can safely break them. And our students will similarly need to work harder to make their writing stand out in personal statements and application letters.

Photo by Charles Parker.

Create Assignments That Are FHO—For Humans Only

Focus on critiquing and editing in class

When you hit “pause” on your assignment routines, you gain some space to reflect on why you assign writing, period. For instance, I create writing assignments to ensure my students practice the science-based principles I teach weekly. These principles map writing quality onto the way our reading brains process English words and sentences.

To improve your students’ writing, try turning their writing chops loose on some AI-generated essays.

Assignments give our entire class opportunities to critique everyone’s writing, including, in some instances, my own work. These critiques also sharpen students’ writing chops. At the same time, these assignments help students internalize what I call the 5Cs of writing: clarity, continuity, coherence, concision, and cadence. [3]

Seen through the lens of the 5Cs, AI-generated essays are absolute crap. Sentences come stuffed with nominalizations—neutered verbs turned into polysyllabic nouns. Their sentence lengths are predictably uniform—and overly long. Ditto their sentence structure. And their continuity is non-existent. To improve your students’ writing, try turning their writing chops loose on some AI-generated essays.

 Adopt a Voice and a Viewpoint

Another AI-proof assignment also exercises students’ analytical skills. Ask students to adopt the perspective of a literary character, then use that character’s lens, including values and prejudices, to write a critique of the plot, its other characters, or its setting. Or ask students to use a character in one novel to weigh in on the values of a character from another.

 For instance, what happens when Nick Carraway from The Great Gatsby turns a cooly analytical eye on fellow New Yorker Lily Bart and her conduct in The House of Mirth? Or when Sherlock Holmes investigates the peculiar events at Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre?

Use Class Discussions as a Springboard

Photo by Yan Krukau

As veteran teacher Peter Greene suggests, our classroom discussions can provide background to assignments that no AI bot can hack. Ask students to take a position on the classroom discussion, or to agree or disagree with what specific students argued in class. Then require that they use this position to analyze the literary work the class discussed.

Lastly, consider reminding students that AI currently, at least, can only replace lazy and unoriginal writers. Then be sure you find ways to identify, reward, and promote originality in your classroom.

This article is one of a series on Teaching ELA in the AI Era.

Footnotes

1. Calculators in the debate include basic, four-function calculators that add, subtract, multiply, and divide, as well as more sophisticated scientific and graphing calculators. For a good debate, see Hackeducation.

2. What students seldom realize is that Microsoft Word and Grammarly frequently bungle corrections, making mistakes in writing that was initially correct.

3. You can find these principles in The Reader’s Brain: How Neuroscience Can Make You a Better Writer (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and Writing for the Reader’s Brain: A Science-based Approach (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).