Reflections on Writing, Thinking, and AI A Response to a Community College English Composition Student Survey
I responded to a survey by students in an English composition class at a community college. I responded to specific questions, which I will not reproduce. Here are my answers:
I want to hear what students think and how students think through their writing. That is challenging for students who may not think in English. So I understand why students want to show their thinking using an English that better represents their thinking. They may feel their English language skills are not good enough to represent the ideas they have. That makes a lot of sense to me. I understand the impulse to use tools that will make the writing look more professional and “smarter” (whatever that means). In college, I tried to write essays in Spanish for Spanish literature class. It was hard! So I understand wanting to have a tool like AI that makes you sound more like what you want to sound like, using words that are better than the words you know and put in a way that feels better than the way you put it. But, often, AI changes the language that students use in a way that flattens and makes generic their writing and thus how they represent their thinking. In short, it removes the unique voice and way of thinking that student brings to the writing task. There is a place for AI in writing, but only after you have developed enough writing skills to use it well. When you are learning to communicate complex thoughts and arguments in writing, which is what we are doing in college and particularly in ENG 101 and 102, using AI is dangerous. It takes away the challenging but rewarding work of articulating ideas and then revising those articulations in a way that feels truer to what you think.
The truth is: writing is hard, because thinking is hard. Communicating thought through the written word requires revision. You have to try words to represent thought, and see how those words fail (they will always fail!). Then, use the words you’ve written on the page to rethink what you thought. You have to ask yourself: is this what I think? And then you revise the imperfect words into slightly less imperfect words (there are no perfect words, sentences, or arguments!). I’m no genius, but I do care about thinking and showing my thinking. I would not have learned how to think as I do without having learned how to write as a way of thinking. Even writing this response to your question has forced me to think about how I think about writing and AI and teaching and college. It’s so rewarding! I feel like a better teacher and thinker for having written this. Thank you for the opportunity! GRADING PHILOSOPHY & FEEDBACK REALITIES My first answer was 10. Then I read Laura’s wise response and changed it to 9. If I know it’s AI produced or have a strong hunch, a student will get a 0 and be asked to have a conversation with me. But for smaller assignments, I’m not going to do that. I only do that for major drafts where I am spending time reading and commenting, because I’m not going to spend that time on a LLMs writing. I’m a teacher of students, not LLMs.
Here’s some inside baseball about teaching: reading and responding to student work is SUPER time consuming. I could spend the amount of time I spend grading ALL student assignments on just one student’s assignment. Seriously, I could comment on a student’s paper; talk with the student for an hour (or 3 hours) to explore their ideas in conversation with them; and then spend hours more working with them to think about how they can make that argument or communicate those ideas in writing. It is a sad truth: each student could have more guidance and support in the writing process. I wish I could commit more to each student. But I can’t. So, I comment as best I can on what I think are the most important things to explore: argument, structure, careful engagement with others’ ideas, guiding the reader (always be thinking about the reader!), etc. And then I offer in person workshops and support to help them as much as I can.
Assuming we are talking about having AI respond (there may be ways that students just use AI to polish their writing, which I still think is bad) then obviously everything is lost. What is the point?! We might as well write a piece of software that has AI write something and then has AI grade it, and then you and I (student and teacher) can go drink lemonade on a beach. Why would I waste my time with reading an LLMs output? I don’t teach robots (at least not yet, and hopefully not ever, barring some AI robot dystopia becoming reality). I teach humans.
I’ve only been teaching 11 years (starting in 2015) and it is still MONUMENTAL how much AI and social media has changed teaching in that time. I still want to teach, but I am spending way too much time figuring out how to teach in a way that allows me to continue to have authentic learning experiences in my classroom and through assignments. I actually love to innovate and reinvent my classes; so I enjoy some of the thinking involved. But AI is powerful, and there’s no system that makes the presence of AI moot, at least not without a new host of problems. I’ve heard of teachers doing all handwriting or using typewriters (LOL!), both of which create accessibility issues for students. I continue to explore ways to teach writing that retains the authentic learning of writing classes. Note on Personal Practice: I use AI to draft worksheets and activities sometimes, but I usually have to make extensive revisions to whatever is produced. It allows me to do it a bit faster because it creates a template to work within; but it isn’t a major change to my teaching.
When you’re in college, it feels all encompassing. It feels like your grades matter SO MUCH! If you’re like me, it feels like the ideas matter so much too! And, if you’re like me, when you are working with a teacher who inspires you to think in new ways and who seems so smart, you want to be in community with them, show them that you are also smart. So, I can imagine working in a language that is not one that you fully own can be hard. But guess what? I grew up speaking English and I had the same experience in college. Sure, I knew some of the grammar of a native speaker, but that doesn’t mean I could use English to communicate what I thought were my big, important ideas. I had to struggle with the language A LOT to say what I thought. I had a leg up over a student who is also learning English as a non-native speaker as do many native speakers. But even native speakers are learning to write in English. We all are. I am right now. I’ve spent a good amount of time writing in this survey and thinking about my tone, style, approach. I tend to be overly abstract and academic at times, because of my training, so I’ve spent a lot of time trying to write in ways that feel like my own voice (note: I just edited this last clause away from “in ways that are more approachable” and changed it to “in ways that feel like my own voice”… that didn’t just change the language; it changed the meaning of what I’m saying… do I think I want to be “approachable”? What does that mean? I sure hope people aren’t afraid of me! When I wrote it the first time, I meant something more like “in my own voice,” but also like “I want to seem like just a normal guy who wants to be understood by other normal people such as yourselves.” I don’t want my academic training to become a barrier to communication, so I try to write differently. All of that and more is captured in my small edit. And the more? The more is the deep psychology of the author and in this author’s case, the author’s anxieties! What do you think of me? Do I sound faux-“man of the people” or like the real McCoy, a genuine, mortal, flawed, but caring and thinking guy? Do you want to have a (non- alcoholic) beer with me, as political consultants often ask of people after they hear a politician speak? Do you think I’m a credible person, or is this meta-comment on my own writing and my own feelings and thoughts coming across as strange and neurotic? They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but even words are a worth a thousand more words and they’re worth a thousand inchoate thoughts and feelings, churning about in the subconscious and the barely conscious realms of the author’s psyche!