As educators, we already know that AI is everywhere. Indeed, the urgency to prepare students for an AI-driven future has prompted many institutions to promote AI fluency across the curriculum. But what does this mean in English classrooms where our goal is teaching students to read critically, write well, and think for themselves? English instructors’ responses to AI may vary from “I’m open” to “Freaking out.” And we get it. In many ways, English courses feel especially vulnerable to AI’s impact.
“Thinking is hard!”
A student of Susan’s once asked for class feedback on her persuasive essay. In an otherwise well-reasoned paper, she argued for the opposition instead of answering it. “Let’s think this through,” Susan said, and the student blurted, “I hate thinking! Thinking is hard!” The class exploded in laughter. Yes, thinking is hard. However, students sometimes overlook the fact that sustained, sometimes painful, effort is how we all learn — that finally “getting it” feels wonderful. English courses help build tolerance for the bumps and frustrations of thinking it through.
A recent Gallup survey on AI use among college students revealed that 45 to 65 percent are using AI to complete coursework — primarily chatbots, programmed not to guide learning but to complete the task. Notably, six of the nine uses cited were writing tasks, no matter what the class. Why? We suspect that the pressures of little time, anxiety, and grades cause students to turn to AI for the very work that requires the most time and practice: writing.
In the race to reexamine curricula, we worry that developmental writing students could be early casualties in today’s AI-driven economy. For students just learning to wrestle with language and give meaning to their ideas, AI may impede the learning process. AI outputs look so perfect compared to their own halting attempts, and studies show that students who lack academic confidence are more likely to outsource their thinking to AI. Researchers at MIT found that students who asked ChatGPT to write their papers became increasingly cognitively disengaged and even had trouble remembering what the paper said.
Human creativity, student interaction, and process over product
As English professors and Cengage authors exploring AI (and like our students, frequently amazed by what it can do), we ask, “How can we put guardrails around AI-use in basic writing courses so that it promotes rather than replaces learning?”
It seems that forbidding AI use or relying on AI checkers just isn’t effective. The MLA’s 2025 “Statement on Educational Technologies and AI Agents” advocates that faculty expertise should inform the content and selection of educational AI because teachers know what guardrails will support learning in their disciplines. Here are five guidelines we find useful now.
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Don’t throw out what works in your English course
Safeguard teaching methods and activities that spark human creativity, encourage student interaction, and prioritize process over product. Some examples include writing workshops, oral and visual presentations, and detailed discussions of readings. Help your students build their own evolving definition of excellent writing. Emphasize the exciting human work that AI cannot replace.
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For developing writers, resist injecting AI into every part of the writing process.
Each step of the writing process is a thinking step. We don’t recommend that developing students use AI to prewrite. Brainstorming, for example, is a vital creative step in which students learn to pour ideas onto paper they didn’t know they had. Likewise, organizing, drafting, and revising are tasks that challenge and refine their thinking. Each step is an exercise in discovery that the student misses if AI is introduced too soon.
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Assign current articles and readings about AI in society
Three such readings that we chose for “Evergreen: A Guide to Writing with Readings,” 12th Edition explore young men hooked on gambling apps, TikTok’s transformational effect on the music industry, and a humorous op-ed on people dating chatbots. Students love these discussions about digital technology and the writing tasks that flow from them. They learn so much more about AI ethics, capabilities, and liabilities than they do from well-intentioned cautions.
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Openly discuss students’ use of AI
Early in the term, ask students to help draft your AI class policy to foster deeper ownership of the AI agreements for your course. Ask, “When do your students use AI and why?” Interestingly, many students who use chatbots have ethical qualms and worry about their cognitive growth. Be honest about your own concerns, too, and make sure that everyone agrees on how AI will be used in your classroom.
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Introduce and class-test AI assignments gradually and with guardrails
In “Evergreen,” we added AI Toolbox Tips. This helps students try out AI and practice honing prompts in a structured way. For example, they might prompt AI to create a personal study planner to organize college tasks. Or they might try using AI to explore career paths.
Our ideal AI assignment in basic English builds on an important writing or reading activity, with a structured AI component that expands the scope or depth. Be purposeful, aiming for lessons that help students view AI not as a reflexive shortcut but as a possible tool to enhance their own intellectual work. Try out AI assignments as if you were a student to see where AI might derail the learning process. The goal is to create exercises engaging, exciting, or unusual enough that students want to do the work themselves.
Find ways to tailor AI assignments to content you teach
AI-focused tasks can affirm and expand work students do rather than substitute for it. For example, “Evergreen” students learning illustration are asked to examine three photographs of modern buildings by architect Frank Gehry. They study each photo, looking for commonalities in shapes, materials, or overall impression. Next, they craft a topic sentence for an illustration paragraph about Gehry’s architectural style. Only then do we have students refine AI prompts about Gehry, who he is, and the types of structures for which he is known.
Reading selections can likewise spark AI practice. Following class discussions of Zadie Smith’s intriguing essay “Sweet Charity,” we’ve asked students to write advice columns, offering readers their most sage guidance about loaning money to friends or how to ask for forgiveness if you’ve wronged someone. After they write a draft, students share their ideas with a chatbot, seeking any additional advice they might want to include.
The path forward
We know that those most likely to succeed in partnership with AI already have strong reading, writing, and thinking skills, often with particular subject expertise. Our job is to instill that same preparedness and confidence in developing writers. AI can support that work, if used thoughtfully and intentionally. More than ever, educators are called on to spark our students’ desire to stay engaged and stick with the hard stuff on their learning journeys.
Written by Susan Fawcett, MA and Karen Cox, Ph.D.
Susan Fawcett, MA, formerly of Bronx Community College, City University of New York, is the author of “Evergreen: A Guide to Writing with Readings” and “Grassroots: The Writer’s Workbook with Readings,” both in their 12th editions.
Karen Cox, Ph.D., is English Department Chair at City College of San Francisco and co-author of “Evergreen: A Guide to Writing with Readings,” 12th Edition.
