This fall semester, Grammarly has been installed on students’ Chromebooks schoolwide, and students’ opinions are mixed. For some, the benefits seem obvious: improved grammar leading to better grades. Yet for others, particularly advanced students, Grammarly gets in the way and may actually make wrong corrections.
Some students choose to disable the program, while others prefer to keep it handy while they write.
Starting with the usefulness of Grammarly: it allows students to rephrase sentences that are too wordy or unclear. This helps them to get their points across more effectively because they do not have to put the work in to edit complex sentences.
Julia Schmitt, a junior at Sierra Pacific High said that Grammarly helps her phrase her sentences.
“I think it makes my writing clearer,” she said.
Tone analysis is another feature that helps the writer portray the mood that they intend to convey in their writing. It is marked with an emoji and a description of the tone used in a section of writing. It is especially useful for emails in order to sound clear and respectful.
Grammarly also fixes small grammatical errors that students could have missed otherwise. It catches the reader’s attention with red underlining for mistakes so that fixing them is as easy as clicking a button (literally).
While these pros seem promising, the cons take a heavy weight on the writing assistant.
As students, a lot of time in elementary and middle school is spent learning correct grammar, but by high school, Grammarly corrects even basic comma errors and grammar mistakes.
Some students find it easier to use Grammarly to fix these mistakes rather than proofreading the work themselves, yet it is worrisome that students lose their skills to analyze their work independently. When writing on physical paper, the only thing available is one’s brain. Reliance on Grammarly for correct English is damaging to a student’s potential.
Schmitt comments, “I think students not knowing how to write on their own is a genuine issue, not just because of future college assignments, but also because AI often messes up and can sound very inhuman when authenticity truly matters.”
Students are also having to find a balance with using it as a tool since Grammarly is technically AI. With the influx of AI models such as ChatGPT, the tolerance for AI usage in academics has diminished. Especially concerning dual enrollment and college students, professors can be even more strict on AI usage and applications such as Grammarly.
While it may seem insignificant to some students, the countless underlines with suggestions, mistakes, rephrasing ideas and upgrade to pro notices can be distracting and discouraging for others. They may be confident in their writing, but then they notice the 63 underlines and are now overwhelmed with input that they never even asked for.
In advanced writing where students use stylistic devices, Grammarly can mess up their writing, telling them they have too many “mistakes” when in reality, the student is right. This debate between Grammarly and the writer may cost the student points when being graded or even being flagged for plagiarism.
Schmitt mentions, “The point of school is to learn. Grammarly’s generative AI can make it harder for them to do so.”
So, while Grammarly is helpful to correct simple mistakes, it makes more sense for schools to disable the program, allowing students to continue building grammar and proofreading skills that are vital in the professional world. The AI may cause more trouble for students in the future than compared to the momentary relief on their grades.
