Hot topic: Grammarly

"Are we allowed to use Grammarly for this essay?" Although I hear this question being asked quite often in History/English classrooms, it never fails to cause instant chaos within the classroom. It is common to see students arguing about whether Grammarly should be used or not, leaving the teacher puzzled (especially for new faculty members who do not fully know about the school yet).

Grammarly, the English grammar enhancement program created by Alex Shevchenko and Max Lytvyn in 2009, has functioned as the primary source for proofreading school essays over the last few years, as well as checking to prevent plagiarism. Recently, many students at Fay started to subscribe the premium service in the hopes of earning better grades.

To me, the main factor that stimulates confusion between different students and teachers is the fact that people are not sure whether using grammarly is considered academically dishonest. Out of the twenty five students that I have surveyed at Fay, twenty one of them responded that using Grammarly has no relationship with cheating. Trin Changkasiri 19' argued, "It's not like the program is writing the whole essay for you. Similar to how teachers allow us to get our essays proofread by the nearest adult around or by peers, Grammarly simply checks one or two elements of your essay. Students use the program, mainly because a lot of their friends and nearby adults are busy." Many other respondents said that Grammarly is just another way of seeing whether your essay is an A range material.

Over eighteen of the students did answer that using Grammarly would not be beneficial for the long term, however. Many of their responses agreed, saying that the convenience of using Grammarly would not ultimately improve their English skills, therefore it does little to prepare students for secondary schools and beyond.

In my opinion, as a former Grammarly user, not only is the program incorrect from time to time, its suggestions often change the original meaning of the sentence. Yet, since even most of the mainstream students find it difficult to clearly express their ideas with correct grammar, Grammarly is a convenient method that students continue to hold. In order to solve this issue, however, Ms. Maslak and I came to a solution that instead of predominantly focusing on the novel discussion based classes, teachers should help provide the correct use of grammar in example essays and sentences, as well as teaching more grammar rules with regularity. Although I still believe that the program is not "technically" cheating, it should be banned at Fay over the next few years for the sake and improvement of the students. In order to do so, detecting plagiarism, applying proper grammar to essay writing, and most importantly, ample support from adults. Let us all hope that we operate our own grammar checker inside our brains in the near future.

Aaron 19' Staff Editor

Written on November, 26th, 2017

#grammarly #school