Mar 4 is celebrated worldwide as National Grammar Day. Starting in 2008, this day recognises the efforts of those grammaticians who strive for excellence in an age marred with shortcuts to achieve perfection.
The first documented use of grammar was in the 5th century BC. Now, thousands of years later, communication is still a delicate web of intricately interwoven systems of syntaxes and structures. National Grammar Day commemorates the rules that govern the language used every day to convey thoughts and ideas—rules that guide human understanding.
What happens when this skill is outsourced to technology?
“ChatGPT exhibits something like the banality of evil: plagiarism and apathy and obviation,” Noam Chomsky, a celebrated linguistic scholar said about the use of AI in an article in The New York Times. In a student-run poll conducted by Stanford University, more than 17% of students admitted using AI for their assignments and exams.
“Students aren’t creative anymore,” Ami Parekh, an English teacher at Mumbai’s Orchid International, said with a sigh. “They can’t even write an essay on something as simple as their classroom that they sit in every day without using AI. Their grammatical skills have significantly deteriorated compared to previous batches,” she added.
With the introduction of ChatGPT, educators across the board were worried about students cheating in their essays and exams with no way for educators to detect the use of AI. Now teachers are being asked to revolutionise the way students are being taught.
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has formed a committee to form a strategy to incorporate AI into the school education system, according to media reports. The New Education Policy is trying to inculcate AI into the Indian curriculum. Several colleges throughout the world are incorporating AI in their teaching methods.
“Given the amorality, faux science and linguistic incompetence of these systems, we can only laugh or cry at their popularity,” Chomsky says at the end of his NYT opinion piece.
Parekh said, “Students don’t know the usage of articles, gerunds, verbs or homonyms. The kids lack the basics of grammar.”
OpenAI is expected to expand and refine ChatGPT’s model which would mean students can expect the program to write far better essays and assignments for them. This National Grammar Day, one can hope that the students, instead of programmes, will return to improving their grammatical skills for effective communication.
