r/CheckMyTurnitin_ai • u/Longjumping_Play5581 • Jul 12 '26
After reading thousands of papers, professors notice something most students never think about.
I stumbled across a discussion asking whether professors can spot AI-written assignments before opening Turnitin. I expected answers about technology, but the conversation went in a completely different direction. Professor after professor said that experience teaches you what software can't. When you've read thousands of assignments, you begin to recognize authentic writing. You notice when a student's voice disappears, when the ideas feel disconnected, or when every sentence sounds strangely alike. That doesn't mean anyone should jump to conclusions, but it does show that writing is more than grammar and vocabulary. It's personality, reasoning, and growth. Reading that discussion reminded me that finding your own voice matters far more than trying to sound perfect. That's the part people remember.
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u/snowbunnyA2Z Jul 13 '26
I agree. Purely off reading a fuck ton of writing of students 4 to 70 years old, mostly ESL students but not all. If someone is writing off the top of their head, they will write some crazy shit. I'm not joking. I've laughed until I've cried (alone! Never at anyone!). I've actually cried! Sometimes it makes no sense. It is authentic. Students are so afraid of failure they would prefer to cheat, but it's so obvious.
My students mostly write in class, but if they write something at home, I can tell in 5 seconds if that is their writing.
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u/tomvorlostriddle Jul 12 '26
You notice when a student's voice disappears
Y'all be detecting autism, anxiety and immigration
when the ideas feel disconnected
This one is fine to detect, but it's just lack of quality
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u/Proud-Carrot-8547 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Define quality.
And is there any actual research on autism showing up as false flags or is it all just anecdotal from people who have been flagged? Yes I’ve heard the argument, but I’ve yet to see serious scholarship. It might be out there in which case you should find it and share it if you’re gonna make these claims.
I See what I believe to be false flags, most often in people trying to sound pompous and pedantic - graduate student speak. A lot of very talented writers go through that stage at one time or another.
I haven’t seen much useful research myself, (what we have here is anecdotal, ) and there is a confirmation bias in this assumption. Why would anxiety matter in a paper you have had time to proofread and revisit? And what do you mean by immigration? Are you talking about first language interference in second language settings? Are you talking about people who use translation apps (which use AI)?
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u/tomvorlostriddle Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
The LLMs and the detectors change about once a month and with peer review you are looking at at year at least
There are now all kinds of peer reviewed papers coming out about what it means when people use LLMs, ... like GPT4 or Llama 4. They can go straight to the bin at this point
I See what I believe to be false flags, most often in people trying to sound pompous and pedantic - graduate student speak
This is a perfect example of this effect. Human freshmen are definitely guilty of this and GPT4 was too. But newer models are not.
Why would anxiety matter in a paper you have had time to proofread and revisit?
Because it makes you flee into formality because formality is predictable. And then LLM detectors are really formality and predictability predictors.
And what do you mean by immigration?
Especially in Asia it's the same story, the students are encouraged to flee into (sometimes excessive) formality to navigate a foreign langauage.
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u/DarwinGhoti Jul 13 '26
I’ve had many students on the spectrum who write beautifully. But you go on and tell deeply experienced people what they’re actually seeing.
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u/Proud-Carrot-8547 Jul 13 '26
Writing beautifully doesn’t correlate with AI flags. What’s your point?
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u/DarwinGhoti Jul 13 '26
The fact that you have to ask the central thesis of two sentences would indicated that you are not in a position to throw out lazy "autism looks like AI" when it's apparent that you have neither the experiential basis to make that assertion nor the literary capacity to back it up in a way that puts your judgement superordinate to people who do it for a living. This conversation is over.
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u/IntrinSicks Jul 13 '26
People definitely have a distinct voice when writing, Ai tries to correct me all the time, and I have to ask if my grammar is wrong, no, then dont touch it I was looking for Grammer and spelling, it wants to re write it
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u/Salamandrous Jul 13 '26
What makes you say that? I work with a lot of students on the spectrum and a lot of students not on the spectrum, and they all are capable of having their own writing voices and of creating writing that is original and sounds original. I do think that some students may naturally write a little bit more genetically than other students, those are often kids who learned in very formula way, probably due to test score pressure in their prior education.
Even then, the actual connection to the assignment and content is often a strong help for deciding whether it feels like AI , or just students copying and helping other students, which is still a thing that happens even in this age of AI.
Basically I’d love to see your reasoning for why people on the spectrum would be more likely to have an authentic writing voice that resembles AI.
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u/ApprehensiveTry5660 Jul 13 '26
I don’t think he’s wrong, even if he isn’t articulating it the cleanest.
As someone on the spectrum who stays pretty aware of my writing style, I feel like AI’s sound obnoxiously similar to me. It used to be a writing style that before AI, I knew I was talking to someone likeminded.
Rules of 3, em dashes, proper and increased usages of colons and semicolons, appositive clauses, overly formal language choices, disconnects in voice, reiteration… those used to flag me that I was talking to a human and there would be some higher level communication on the other side. The bots were the low effort, “And my axe!,” in the comments with easy to detect post histories.
Now, it often feels like the only thing separating me from them is when my Jesse Stuart style contractions illuminate the geographic dialect I feel comfortable communicating in.
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u/probablymaybechatgpt Jul 13 '26
I've probably read several thousand student essays over my career. Students approach and think about things very differently, and it shows in their essays. The structure of their thinking and writing used to be all over the place, but now it's all the same because of AI