I've been talking to many of my colleagues about the difficulties of teaching students to write. We're coming to realize that the problem actually doesn't stem from writing so much as it does from reading; more specifically, lack thereof. Students are bad writers because they don't read enough to assimilate elements of language, style, and usage. This is another reason I think that it's so easy to pick up on plagiarism: the minute you realize there's a shift in voice or style (something you could only detect having encountered a wide variety of voices in the first place.
Enter the good folks at Radiolab, one of my favorite podcasts. I was listening to a program of theirs called "Talking to machines" and they profiled Rollo Carpenter, the inventor of Cleverbot an artificial intelligence conversation machine. Carpenter said that he first created a program (in the 1980s, if I recall) that included a variety of pre-programmed responses to questions; he would type a question, the computer would provide an answer. Another incarnation of the program was designed to learn from conversations. The program started as a blank slate. Carpenter typed "Hello," and the program "learned" that word: it would now respond with "hello." Carpenter then typed "How are you doing?" The computer now knew "Hello" and "How are you doing?" and could respond with either of those. Cleverbot would learn new phrases from every conversation it had. At the moment, it has engaged in more than 20 million conversations with a diverse body of interlocutors via the internet. Here's a transcript of a recent chat (I am the user):
I think this offers a nice model of why students have difficulty writing. The pool of possible "responses" is not as deep as it should be, but that pool can be deepened by reading more and more. The more you read, the greater your grasp of style will be, and the easier it will be for you to write naturally.
The bigger question, of course, is how do we get students to read good writing? I think they spend plenty of time reading texts, Facebook notes, blogs (wait a minute... I said good writing!) etc...
Enter the good folks at Radiolab, one of my favorite podcasts. I was listening to a program of theirs called "Talking to machines" and they profiled Rollo Carpenter, the inventor of Cleverbot an artificial intelligence conversation machine. Carpenter said that he first created a program (in the 1980s, if I recall) that included a variety of pre-programmed responses to questions; he would type a question, the computer would provide an answer. Another incarnation of the program was designed to learn from conversations. The program started as a blank slate. Carpenter typed "Hello," and the program "learned" that word: it would now respond with "hello." Carpenter then typed "How are you doing?" The computer now knew "Hello" and "How are you doing?" and could respond with either of those. Cleverbot would learn new phrases from every conversation it had. At the moment, it has engaged in more than 20 million conversations with a diverse body of interlocutors via the internet. Here's a transcript of a recent chat (I am the user):
User: What is music theory?Is the conversation a bit awkward? Sure. Is it approaching human-human interaction? I think so, as do many others (the website currently boasts "42% human"). As Cleverbot accumulates a deeper pool of responses to choose from, no doubt it will begin to appear more and more natural.
Cleverbot: What kind of music do you like?
User: I like classical music. What kind of music do you like?
Cleverbot: I like basically everything but rap and country.
User: I love rap music!
Cleverbot: Who do you like in rap music?
User: Ice-T is my favorite rapper.
Cleverbot: Yes.
User: Who do you like in rap music?
Cleverbot: No.
I think this offers a nice model of why students have difficulty writing. The pool of possible "responses" is not as deep as it should be, but that pool can be deepened by reading more and more. The more you read, the greater your grasp of style will be, and the easier it will be for you to write naturally.
The bigger question, of course, is how do we get students to read good writing? I think they spend plenty of time reading texts, Facebook notes, blogs (wait a minute... I said good writing!) etc...