AI powered grammar checkers for students: Good or bad idea?

(Text format: Blog Post)

The short answer is "yes" when used in a way students learn from mishaps or mistakes, and the grammar checker doesn't change writing in a way it wasn't supposed to.

My first attempt when working with the free Grammarly version was neat yet annoying at the same time. The free version allowed unlimited attempts for spotting and changing basic grammar, but it provided limited advice for more specific and better improvements. After that, I only received structural or punctuation errors underlined in all colours from the rainbow. From then on, I was alone and had to figure out this mysterious smartie-coloured sentence puzzle, which could be nerve-wracking - especially if under time pressure or if you couldn't get to the root of what was exactly wrong with my seeming perfectly sentence.

I first played with the idea upgrading to Grammarly's premium version. However, as time went on, I noticed what a fun challenge it was to figure out why Grammarly underlined a sentence part, and I must admit my writing improved dramatically over the months. Therefore, I can advise students to use an AI-powered grammar checker to enhance their writing skills. Students should use it the same way I do, and before they click on any typo changes, it is crucial to look them over to learn from any errors and ensure the checker's changes are valid. For example, some of Grammarly's suggested changes would have led to context, meaning and style changes in my texts, which were not ideal.

Therefore, students should not solely rely on the grammar checker and should always re-read their writing. And not only re-read, but read it aloud. I tend doing this with all my writing. It is the best way to hand in perfect pieces of writing. You don't need to use Grammarly per se. I will address several effective grammar checker tools in a future post. And yes, I used Grammarly to edit this post and learned from my mistakes as usual.

Happy future AI editing!