Artificial intelligence has made writing an easy task.
AI has been in our lives for a while now with spell checkers, grammar checkers have become common and people have got even things now that can sort of check, syntax, and style as well.
But ‘How is AI impacting student’s abilities to write and think’?
David Monteith is a professor at Fanshawe’s School of language and liberal studies.
He says the students are relying on AI way too much that if they ever have to do anything in class written down on a piece of paper, not only their hands get sore after some time, they also can’t really write for long and correctly.
“But their grammar, their spelling, it’s very low level because they have come to realize so heavily on autocorrect on spellcheck on those sorts of things that that even phonetically they have a hard time spelling out words”, Monteith says.
He says it’s not only impacting the ability of students to read and write but also find a job.
“Unfortunately, you know, when we think about making a resume, you know, it’s such a saturated market now that many employers who are hiring people, they can, they can really pick the cream of the crop. And so, one spelling error, one grammatical error is usually enough for them just to move on to the next person’s resume,” he says.
The people have started relying on AI, programs like Grammarly. To this David says, we’re not only going to lose grammar and the ability to spell we’re also going to lose our style as well.
“If you’ve got a program that is trying to make everybody’s style exactly the same, well then everybody’s style is going to sound kind of robotic. So, even things like Grammarly aren’t going to work for us because, again, style is personalized. The language and the way that we write it is very individualistic,” he says.
Student view on AI and online writing-
But Wanda McCain an English language instructor at the London Language Institute thinks that students can rely on Grammarly and other AI tools just like a dictionary that the students can utilize.
Credits- Simranjeet Sehgal
“I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing. But I think that we also need to ensure There’s a balance between their access to those tools and the need to develop their own skills is important. And so that should be built into the curriculum itself,” McCain says.
She says artificial intelligence can not be blamed as a whole but it’s more of a difference between the English language itself, sometimes it’s cultural.
“For example, some cultures especially a culture that has a language that is significantly different, not just in language, but in the alphabet, that can really be challenging for students and so they tend to make a lot of spelling mistakes, but also grammar, depending on how different their native language is to English,” she says.
McCain says when people have an advantage of tools, they need to know how to use them properly. And not rely too much on these tools.
“For example, a calculator in a math class to do long division, and those tools are taken away from you or you don’t have access to them, then that can really be to your detriment. So, it’s important for students to be aware that when they use tools, they need to use them wisely, and they can’t assume that everything that the AI does for them is correct,” McCain says
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