For this lesson, I do a side-by-side comparison of Anne Lamott’s “Shitty 1st Drafts” and a text generated by ChatGPT, from a prompt that matches Lamott’s thesis. I don’t tell the students the second piece was written by A.I.—only that it essentially says the same thing as Lamott’s piece, only differently.
The first time I taught this, I expected them to find the Lamott piece a lot more entertaining, and I planned to segue into a discussion about how and why humans write more engaging prose than A.I. I had them write three adjectives describing each piece on Post-Its and put them on the board. I expected the adjectives in Lamott’s column to be fairly positive and the adjectives in the other column to be negative (“dry,” “boring,” etc.). However, the students surprised me. They found Lamott’s neuroticism and hyperbole annoying and greatly preferred A.I.’s robotic calm. At least we all agreed that Lamott’s piece was better at evoking emotion!
The results were slightly better when I asked students to write up memorable quotes from each piece–preferably quotes they could recall off the top of their heads. Unlike the A.I. generated piece, “Shitty First Drafts” was full of quotes they could remember. In any event, though the lesson didn’t go as expected, it was still interesting and productive.
If you don’t want to compare the texts in their entirety and suffer the students preference of A.I., you can use this slideshow, which makes side-by-side comparisons of how Lamott makes her points and how A.I. makes the same points. Framed in this manner, it’s undeniable that Lamott’s piece is at least more interesting. Students could vote on which side of the slide they preferred using a show of hands. Or, if you would rather print the quotes out and tape them to the wall, you can have students vote using dot stickers.