Instructor Companion
Talking About Writing Process and Authorship
Use this page when you want to set process expectations, or you have a concern about whether work is a student’s own.
What students experience
A conversation about whether work is a student’s own is one of the most stressful moments in a course, for both people. For a multilingual student, three things can make it harder.
- Language differences can be misread as evidence. A sudden improvement may come from a permitted tool, a tutor, or weeks of effort. An unusual phrase may come from another language. Neither is evidence of AI use.
- Detection tools are not reliable. The MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI describes surveillance and detection approaches as “unreliable and biased,” producing false positives that can lead to wrongful accusations (2023, p. 7).
- Expectations about sources differ. The CCCC statement notes that “textual ownership and the ownership of ideas are concepts that are culturally based.” It calls patchwriting, staying too close to a source’s wording, “a natural part of the process of learning to write in a second language.”
A student who is accused, and who is not confident in spoken English, may not be able to explain their process under pressure, even when the work is their own.
Seven practices
Set the process expectations at the start
Before the first major assignment, say how you would like students to keep a record of their work: drafts in one Word document saved to OneDrive, notes, and short notes on significant help. Ask this of every student. A record that is normal for everyone is not a burden placed on a few.
Build process into the assignment
Collect a proposal, an outline, or a draft along the way. Conferences and brief check-ins show you how the work is developing, and they give students practice explaining it.
Do not use a detection score as evidence
A score is not a finding. The task force urges “caution and reflection about the use of AI text detection tools” (Recommendation 4). If you have a concern, start from the work and the student, not from a percentage.
Do not treat language differences as signs of AI use
Unusual phrasing, uneven grammar, or a change in fluency between drafts are common in second language writing. So is polished writing from a student who used a permitted tool or a tutor.
Start a concern with a conversation, not an accusation
Ask the student to walk you through how the work developed, using their record if they have one. Ask open questions. Offer to meet in writing as well as in person, and let the student take time to answer. The goal is to understand what happened.
Teach source use more than once
The CCCC statement says instructors “should not expect multilingual writers to perfectly execute these practices after a single lesson.” When you find patchwriting, treat a first instance as a teaching moment, and point to the paired student page on paraphrase.
Remember what a record can and cannot show
A writing record shows how work developed, and it supports a conversation. It does not prove or disprove AI use, and its absence does not prove misconduct. Follow your college’s academic integrity process for any formal step.
Practices 3, 4, and 6 draw on the MLA-CCCC working paper and the CCCC statement. Practices 1, 2, 5, and 7 are practitioner advice from faculty development work at OCTC, consistent with the task force’s call for academic integrity approaches that “support students rather than punish them” (Recommendation 4).
Before and after
Both messages respond to the same concern: an essay that reads very differently from the student’s earlier work.
The AI detector flagged your essay at 87%. This does not sound like your writing. Explain yourself, or you will receive a zero.
Thank you for submitting Essay 2. I would like to talk with you about how this essay developed, as I do with many students during the term. Could we meet this week in my office hours, or on Teams? Please bring your Word file, or share it with me, so we can look at the version history and your notes together. If you used any tools or help, that is fine to mention. I want to understand your process.
What changed
- The detection score is gone. It is not evidence, and it starts the conversation as an accusation.
- “Does not sound like you” is gone. A change in writing has many explanations.
- The penalty is gone. No decision is made before the conversation.
- The message asks for the record and invites the student to describe any help they used.
Wording you can copy
For the syllabus
Writing is a process, and I want to see yours. For major assignments, keep your drafts in one Word document saved to OneDrive, and keep your notes and a short note about any significant help you used. I may ask any student to talk with me about how their work developed. That conversation is a normal part of this course, not an accusation.
Questions for a process conversation
- How did you choose this topic?
- Show me where you started. What changed between your first draft and this one?
- Which source was most useful? Tell me about it in your own words.
- What help or tools did you use, and for which parts?
- Which part of this essay are you most satisfied with?
Links for students
Two student pages pair with this one. The first teaches every student to keep a writing record and to say clearly who did what. The second teaches paraphrase and shows what “too close” looks like. You can add these lines to an assignment:
Keep a record of your work as you go. Keeping a Record of Your Writing Process shows you how.
Before you use a source, read Quote, Paraphrase, or Summarize.
For expectations about AI and language tools, see Setting expectations for translation, grammar tools, and AI.
Sources
- Conference on College Composition and Communication. (2020). CCCC statement on second language writing and multilingual writers (opens in a new tab). See Part Two, “Textual Borrowing.”
- MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI. (2023, July). MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI working paper: Overview of the issues, statement of principles, and recommendations (opens in a new tab). See “Risks to Students” and Recommendations 4 and 5.