Chatbots using artiticial intelligence are gaining popularity among students. This video compares two of the most popular,
ChatGPT and Bard from Google, to see how well they correct student writing. The bots were tested on their ability to recognize and correct 8
common errors in student writing: misspelling, subject-verb agreement, noun-pronoun agreement, sentence fragments,
comma splice/run-on sentences, verb tense, apostrophe use, and comma use. The test uses a passage from a student essay rewritten
to contain at least one instance of each error. Let’s first read through the passage. The day I went to jail for the first time as a young
adult was very very scarie for me. That contains a misspelling and one of the “verys” must be deleted or a comma placed between
them. I had not been graduated from high school for very long when I was thrusted [which is a verb form error] into a situation
I knew nothing about. Period. To say the least. Period. Which is a sentence fragment. I went from nestbird to jailbird, in record time.
“Nestbird” is not a word. It is maybe a misspelling of two words. And the comma after jailbird is not needed. In jail, which is an
introductory phrase, should be followed by a comma. I feel –should be I felt to avoid a shift in verb tense from past to present--
like a baby canary in the midst of vultures. The comma after vultures creates a comma splice. I could only hear my fathers
missing apostrophe voice welcomeing, which is misspelled, me to the world of choices. Both of my parents was frightened,
an example of subject-verb disagreement, for me but she represents a noun-pronoun agreement error since it refers to both parents.
Did not cut me any slack, which is a colloquialism and could be an error depending on the assignment instructions.
Now, let’s see how the two chatbots compare when correcting these errors. First is Google’s Bard AI. You will need to login with your Google
account to use Bard. Once in, I used this prompt: Correct the grammar, spelling, and punctuation in the following passage,
then I pasted in the passage. Be sure to click the start check button. In just a few seconds, I receive the results from Bard. As you can see,
one nice feature is that Bard provides a bullet list of the eight changes it suggests. However, Bard corrected the redundant “very very”
but did not notate the change on its list. Otherwise, Bard corrected the two misspellings, the verb form error, the pronoun
error, the comma error, and added a period at the end of the sentence. The “frightened” change makes no sense. The word “frightened”
is in the fourth sentence, not the second, and nothing was changed. Despite this problem with the bullet list, the new paragraph no longer
contains any errors, so a student could definitely benefit from this input. Now let’s compare those results with the feedback from
Chat GPT. Once logged in, I used the same prompt: “Correct the grammar, spelling, and punctuation in the following passage.”
As you can see, ChatGPT makes essentially the same corrections. It keeps the two “verys” and puts a comma between them. That’s fine.
But this is interesting in that ChatGPT is trying to keep the same voice of the original passage. ChatGPT does leave an important error
uncorrected. The pronoun error caused by “she” referring to “parents” is not corrected. Also missing is that handy list of corrections
that Google’s Bard suggests. This lack—as well as the failure to correct a major error--makes ChatGPT less useful as a proofreading tool.
As a result, I highly recommend using suggestions from both Bard and ChatGPT. Also, try running the same passge through
several times in Chat GPT and Google Bard, and you will receive additional suggestions. Although using both chatbots is ideal,
if you have time for only one, I recommend Google’s Bard for its accuracy and more detailed feedback.