In this corner, weighing in as the inevitable future, I give you: the writing algorithm!
… and in this corner, weighing in as a lazy, nineteenth century habit that no one can shake: tedious, overly structured High School English writing!
The trick is going to be creating an algorithm that plagiarism checkers won’t catch. That shouldn’t be too hard as they tend to look for matching text, and any good algorithm would put the pieces together in varying ways depending on the variables given.
With a proscribed structure similar to sports stories or financial reports, it should be fairly easy to get Narrative Science to modify their writing engine to accept key points and put together a five paragraph essay that perfectly follows the tediously exact, point-proof-explanation requirements of high school essay writing.
The process should go something like this:
- student logs in to the website and enters brainstorming ideas based on a cursory reading on the subject matter (Macbeth should be covered in 20 minutes, tops)
- thesis (an arguable statement) is generated based on ideas given (or offered, depending on how much you want to put into this)
- supporting points are suggested. The algorithm places them in order of importance based on the number of hits and positive previous reviews, student picks the ones that grab them
- the algorithm finds quotes from the play and lit crit that relate to each supporting point
- body paragraphs are constructed following point/proof/explanation around chosen quotes
- introduction and conclusion are generated based on body paragraphs
- student reviews the paper for vocabulary or wording that doesn’t suit their style
- if too complicated a word is used, the student can right click and get a list of synonyms
- the completed paper, using variable data, is unique, and presented in the vicinity of the student’s knowledge of the subject matter, working vocabulary and writing style
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| Behold my essay-inator! |
The point and click essay is finally here!