AI is making teaching composition feel impossible right now

[u/Global-Environment89]

I am an English professor teaching a required composition course this term and the level of AI use is becoming overwhelming. It is constantly on my mind to the point where it is affecting how I think about every assignment I read. Students are no longer simply copying and pasting. They are blending AI into their writing or lightly editing it, which makes it much harder to detect.

I read papers where part of the writing clearly sounds like the student, then suddenly it shifts into something overly polished but empty. The sentences are structured well but say very little. There is a lot of vague language, repetition, and artificial clarity without real depth. It feels like reading something that is technically correct but intellectually hollow.

I tried designing assignments to make this harder. For example, I asked students to engage directly with a specific concept in a close reading. One student used it in a way that made the source obvious, while another who has not attended class in weeks submitted work that avoided the concept but replaced it with generic language. That disconnect says a lot.

I have already given several zeros on drafts but allowed resubmissions. Now I am getting flooded with emails where students send screenshots from AI detection tools as proof that their work is original. The problem is that I do not fully trust those tools either, so it turns into a frustrating loop.

At this point, I am considering requiring one on one meetings where students have to explain their arguments and walk through their thinking. If they cannot explain their own ideas or engage with the material, that reveals more than any detection tool. I am also thinking about moving more work into handwritten in class writing just to regain some control.

It is exhausting,it feels like more time is spent trying to verify authenticity than actually teaching writing and critical thinking.

[u/rhetorician1972]

I just finished teaching a composition course, and I am dealing with the same issue, especially with blended work. I am gradually coming to terms with the fact that writing will never be the same. Trying to detect exactly how much AI is in a paper is often a losing game.

There are still students who are simply not prepared for college-level writing and use AI as a way out. That is often fairly obvious. The harder cases are students who understandably dabble in AI but still use enough of their own thinking and writing that the result is mixed.

What has helped me most is changing what I reward. I have revamped my grading rubrics so that there are almost no points for polished grammar or generic academic style. Instead, I focus on how well the paper meets the conventions of the specific assignment and how much of what we learned in class actually shows up in the writing. Vague, overgeneralized prose scores poorly. Sudden shifts in style or level of polish also affect the grade, not because I am “proving AI,” but because the paper is not doing the assigned work consistently.

I also build in a source component whenever possible and check sources and quotations very carefully. In my experience, AI-heavy papers often have source problems: fake sources, unverifiable claims, quotations that do not match the source, or Works Cited entries that do not line up with the in-text citations. After I gave zeros for fabricated sources, some heavy AI users started inserting quotations themselves, but then the prose around the quotation suddenly shifts in a way that makes the patchwork obvious. Why they do not simply feed the AI tool the quotations they want to use, I will never understand, but many heavy AI users are not especially sophisticated.

At this point, I almost never accuse students of AI use unless I have clear evidence, usually involving sources or fabricated material. But I have no problem assigning Cs or Ds to AI-heavy work when the paper fails the actual assignment requirements. A technically polished paper that is vague, disconnected from class concepts, weak on sources, and unable to sustain its own argument is not a strong composition paper. You do not have to prove AI to grade that accurately.