When I work with student writers online, they make spelling mistakes, verb tense and number mistakes, and punctuation mistakes. When they do, a squiggly underline alerts students that they have made an error. What almost always happens next is that the student clicks on the error, notices a correction suggested by the software, and clicks on that suggestion, replacing the error with the suggested correction. The student rarely tries to figure out what the error is, and rarely tries to figure out if the offered solution is correct.
AI to the rescue.
But is this a good idea? Using AI this way offers many benefits.
- Students can correct errors immediately. No trying to figure out what is wrong and no trying to figure out how to correct it.
- Student writers become more efficient, spending their time thinking about content rather than grammar or spelling.
- The correction software is free, embedded in the Word or Google Doc software. No need to subscribe to Grammarly or Microsoft Editor.
- Dyslexic students and others can work independently with confidence that their writing is error-free, or almost.
Using AI also offers drawbacks.
- Students do not improve their spelling, use of apostrophes, or subject-verb agreement. There is no incentive to improve if the software can do it all.
- Sometimes the software makes mistakes such as when the student writes slang, acronyms or abbreviations. It can’t detect homophones and might leave as uncorrected this sentence: The bare walked in the backyard.
- If the student’s spelling is way off, the software might not be able to tell what the student means and might not detect an error or know how to fix it.
- Students can become over-reliant on autocorrect software. If they are tested by writing on notebook paper, their work is full of common mistakes.
- Specialist words not commonly used in everyday writing might not be recognized by the autocorrect software.
The corrections can be turned off easily, but none of the students I work with do that. They depend on the autocorrect feature—some because English is their second language and some because their teachers have not focused on spelling and grammar.
What’s a teacher to do? Allow or not allow autocorrect?
I have decided to allow it for the reasons noted above. Using it saves time and allows me to focus on composition rather than spelling and grammar. If I see a student making the same error over and over, I will draw his or her attention to it, and we might have a lesson on it.
Many of my students’ parents disagree. They want me to focus on spelling and grammar during the rough draft stage of writing. I used to explain that doing this interrupts the flow of ideas. Now I don’t need to explain because students make corrections with the click of a mouse long before their parents see their errors.
In their adult lives, students will be working on computers, tablets or other electronic devices with built-in autocorrections. Using autocorrections will be as normal as using microwave ovens. Schools should prepare students for the real world of tomorrow, not for the world of their grandparents.
English Writing Teacher 