Examples and the joy of quoting: How I’ve begun handling AI written essays
Part Two
In my previous post, I wrote about precision. In the comments, Dr. Annette Vee asked me about the relationship between precision and specificity. What a good question! I’ve been thinking: One relationship is the use of examples.
I’ve almost become hyper focused on examples because those are both hardest for bots to create and where student learning comes from. Examples don’t fit averages and the bots can only come up with average sentences.
More importantly, I want students to learn from their writing more than I want to use writing to demonstrate grasping course concepts. I try hard to avoid using writing to evaluate student learning. Dr. Anne Herrington, a mentor of mine, wrote an article more than 40 years ago that argued writing teachers need to avoid using writing as method of evaluation.
Writing outside of classroom contexts is all about communication. Very few writers get graded. They might get paid or their writing might get reviewed but rarely is it evaluated with a grade. Even when it is evaluated professionally, that’s more akin to a rigorous editing process.
Like any good writing teacher, I see the student writing process as a learning process by which ideas are developed over time and iteration (drafting, revision, etc.). To me, an integral part of the learning process is prompting students by asking for examples (“add an example here” or “What do you mean here? Use an example to illustrate your point.”). Often, I’ve found myself returning to the art of direct quoting. I ask students to provide a quote and then dig into that passage (literary scholars call this “close reading”).
It’s funny, right? Quoting and close reading isn’t new, but maybe it’ll experience a renaissance in our era of automated bot writing. I was taught to quote directly in high school and college. I figured out early that teachers wanted passages quoted and then a rigorous explication of those quotes (at least a few sentences). One teacher in high school (Mrs. Staley!) made us write explications of single quotes by hand. I recall her asking to look at single words “if you must.”
I’ve always had an expectation of direct quoting and close reading but I stopped being explicit about it in the past few years. Then, last spring, in my tech writing class, I found myself returning to explicitly talking to students about the joy of quoting. It allows a writer to be precise, provide an example, and totally avoid any complications related to AI bots. One student remarked to me that direct quoting felt like a cheat code because it gave him plenty of things to write about it. I told him it wasn’t cheating to quote or to go granular with specific words and phrases. It was one of those awesome teaching moments.
Here are a few go-to comments related to quoting:
“Provide a quote. Then write out your thoughts about that passage for a few sentences. Connect those thoughts back to a larger point.”
“Go deeper here. You’re moving quickly through your argument. Have patience with the writing. I’ll have patience as a reader.”
“Slow down. There are a lot of good ideas here but you need to provide examples of the ideas and rework the presentation of the ideas. I can see you developing them. Give yourself more text to work with. Provide a quote or two.”
I hope this helps! What are your go-to comments related to quoting and asking students to provide examples?