Primrose Road

Today I tested out ETS' Proofwriter software, thinking from the start that it was likely to be rather ineffective because sentence-level editing should not be the focus when rewriting a first draft. See my earlier post for a brief explanation.

I wrote a short essay that incorporated many of the issues that freshman composition teachers encounter (if you think the essay below is more parodic than realistic, then you've never taught freshman comp): generalities, lack of proper citation and lit review skills, difficulties with the mechanics of quoting, problems expressing ideas they understand in their own minds (i.e. the paragraph on "increased linguistic awareness") in writing, overuse of rhetorical questions, refusal to re-read or slow down while writing. Below, I reprint my "student essay" (which, again, is my creation, not that of a real student's), as well as a summary of the ProofWriter feedback.

The essay:

For centuries people have taught each other things both in schools and in life. Today there is a question of whether kids in schools should learn languages other than English. Is this a good idea or a bad idea? Is it worth it for kids to learn another language? For my assignment I researched whether foreign languages should be taught in schools.

According to Wikipedia it says "a foreign language is a language not spoken by the people of a certain place." And "most schools around the world teach at least one foreign language." Why shouldn't America teach at least one foreign language too? Well some people think it shouldn't. But the website www.actfl.org it says "Language learning correlates with higher academic achievement on standardized test measures." So learning languages mean you get better grades and SAT scores.

"There is a correlation between second language learning and increased linguistic awareness." It can help students learn about languages too, like when in high school we learn about the sujuntive tence in French and it turns out we have the same tence in enlish too, But we didn't necessarily know that because we grew up speaking english and so don't have to think about it as much. Learning French made us learn something new in English.

So even though some poeple might think we shiuldn't take foreign language s in school, I think we should because we can learn more about all languages and how all languages work this way, like with what happened in my French class.

Summary of feedback:

Grammar:

1. Identifies "But the website ..." as an incomplete sentence, where the actual problem is the extraneous "it," perhaps supporting the elementary-school myth that sentences can't begin w/"and" or "but."

2. Correctly ID's "it can help students learn ..." as a run-on sentence.

Usage:

1. Claims that in the sentence that begins "Learning French made us learn something new in English," that an article is missing from the word "learning," which is not the case.

Mechanics:

1. "English" is not capitalized. (Correctly identified).
2. Incorrectly states that there should be a capital letter after the www, as though the period after "www" represented the end of a sentence.
3. Suggests that student add a comma after the phrase "for centuries." (Also correct).

Style:

The software apparently doesn't like any of Imaginary!student's transitional phrases, highlighting "According to" (which is in my opinion ridiculous because we want students to use signal phrases and not just drop quotes from the sky), and all all "and"s, "but"s, and "so"s beginning sentences, most of which are, oddly enough, stylistically correct.

Ultimately, this service does not give students a good starting point from which to revise a first draft; even if a program could be designed for this purpose, it would not be useful if it only pointed out style, usage, and grammar issues, because these are issues to be undertaken after the second draft (at least). Critical thinking skills need to come first.