Key Takeaways
- New research shows AI-generated essays, while grammatically sound, lack the personal engagement found in student writing.
- Student essays utilize techniques like questions and personal comments to connect with readers and build stronger arguments.
- AI essays tend to be impersonal, avoid questions, and lack a clear viewpoint, making them less persuasive.
- These distinct differences might help educators identify essays written by AI tools like ChatGPT.
Artificial intelligence can write essays, but they don’t quite measure up to student work yet, according to researchers at the University of East Anglia in the UK.
A recent study compared 145 real student essays with 145 generated by ChatGPT. While the AI writing was impressively smooth and correct, it missed a vital ingredient: the human touch.
The study, published in the journal *Written Communication*, aimed to see how well AI could mimic student writing, especially in how writers connect with their audience. This information comes from a report by Phys.org.
Researchers focused on “engagement markers,” such as rhetorical questions and personal insights, which make writing more interactive and convincing.
Professor Ken Hyland noted that student essays were full of these strategies. They used questions, personal reflections, and direct appeals to the reader, making their arguments clearer and more compelling.
In contrast, the ChatGPT essays felt more distant and impersonal. While they followed academic writing rules, they lacked personal flavour and failed to present a strong stance on the topic.
The AI tended to avoid asking questions or adding personal commentary, resulting in writing that was less engaging and persuasive overall. Professor Hyland suggested this stems from AI’s training, which focuses on coherence over conversational style.
These findings could be good news for educators worried about students using AI to cheat. Understanding the stylistic differences might help teachers spot machine-generated assignments.
However, the researchers don’t suggest banning AI. Instead, they see tools like ChatGPT as potential teaching aids.
Professor Hyland emphasized that education is about teaching students how to think, not just how to write. Developing critical thinking is a uniquely human skill that algorithms can’t replicate. AI can support learning, but shouldn’t replace the process of developing one’s own ideas and voice.
