In the ongoing battle for academic honesty against a rising tide of easy-to-access plagiarism opportunities, the arguments for a considerable amount of in-class writing just keep going up. As a teacher of AP Language and Composition, I assign mostly in-class writing to prep my students for the exam. In the course of roughly thirty in-class essays a year, I have a pretty thorough understanding of my students' styles and abilities. Thus, if they turned in an out-of-class essay that didn't "sound like them," I would be pretty comfortable calling them out for academic dishonesty. And, that is the issue in a fascinating feature in the Atlantic Monthly. Richard Gunderman - in his article Write My Essay, Please - exposes a new addition to the essay-writing assistance that many teachers thought they had prevented with the arrival of TurnItIn.com.
Now, students can purchase assignment-specific non-plagiarized essays which can be accessed in a very short time period. Apparently, quite a few online sources are offering essays written-to-order for very reasonable prices. And since they are crafted upon request, they are not plagiarized and will not be caught by the standard plagiarism sites. While Gunderman approaches the situation philosophically, wondering what it says about students and our world that they would simply pay someone to do their work, I am looking at it more practically in terms of how I can continue to guarantee academic integrity. In essence, the only way to do so is to assign a fair amount of in-class writing. While some teachers are more hesitant to do so, it is really the only way to verify a student's skills. Even longer research projects can be handled in class with a practice of a writing journal and incremental grades for drafts. One of my colleagues assigns out of class research papers, but tracks students' progress via their journals.
Regardless, English teachers need to be aware of these new essay writing services.
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