


Initial question arising from ordinary situation or conversation (#2, p.346) The grading criteria is derived from the instructions in How to Write a Good Socratic Dialogue (numbered items listed on pages 344-347 in PDF).Įach criterion is assigned a value of 10% towards a total of 100% from the Instructions: How to Write a Good Socratic Dialogue Socratic Dialogue Evaluation: That's what directs you during rewriting, and that's one of the things lacking when you start with text generated by an A.I." Your first draft isn't an unoriginal idea expressed clearly it's an original idea expressed poorly, and it is accompanied by your amorphous dissatisfaction, your awareness of the distance between what it says and what you want it to say. Some might say that the output of large language models doesn't look all that different from a human writer's first draft, but, again, I think this is a superficial resemblance. Sometimes it's only in the process of writing that you discover your original ideas. The struggle to express your thoughts doesn't disappear once you graduate-it can take place every time you start drafting a new piece. If students never have to write essays that we have all read before, they will never gain the skills needed to write something that we have never read.Īnd it's not the case that, once you have ceased to be a student, you can safely use the template that a large language model provides. Having students write essays isn't merely a way to test their grasp of the material it gives them experience in articulating their thoughts. The hours spent choosing the right word and rearranging sentences to better follow one another are what teach you how meaning is conveyed by prose. And the time and effort expended on that unoriginal work isn't wasted on the contrary, I would suggest that it is precisely what enables you to eventually create something original. "If you're a writer, you will write a lot of unoriginal work before you write something original.

Ted Chiang: Sci-Fi Short Stories Philosophy through Science Fiction Stories
