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How to tell if a student wrote it

Detection tools promise certainty and deliver percentages that convict fluent writers and miss lazy copying. What actually holds up is the same thing that always has: you know your students' writing, and you can build assignments where outsourced work exposes itself. Here is what to look for and what to do about it.

Signals worth your attention

• The voice break. Wednesday's paragraph writer submits Friday prose with subordinate clauses and a vocabulary shift. Compare against work produced in class; the in-class sample is your baseline and your best evidence.
• Fluent emptiness. Generated text is grammatical, balanced, and oddly weightless: every paragraph the same size, claims hedged symmetrically, no specific detail that required being in your class. It reads like a summary of an essay rather than an essay.
• The missing fingerprints. No reference to class discussion, the assigned edition, your marginal instructions, or the local example everyone else used. Outsourced work answers the topic, not the assignment.
• Confident errors. Invented quotations, misattributed sources, or a plot detail that is not in the book. Fabricated specifics are stronger evidence than any style judgment.
• Version history that jumps. In Google Docs, a document that goes from blank to finished in one paste says most of what you need to know. Check it before forming a theory; the essay drafted over four evenings just cleared itself.

What does not hold up

• Detector scores alone. They flag multilingual and formal writers disproportionately and can be argued to a standstill by any parent. Treat a score as a reason to look closer, never as the finding.
• "It's too good." Students improve, sometimes suddenly, and the accusation lands on your strongest writers first.
• One conversation you did not document.

The conversation, not the accusation

Ask the student to walk you through the essay: why this thesis, what does this word in your third paragraph mean, what would you cut if it were 100 words shorter. A student who wrote it answers imperfectly but immediately. A student who did not, cannot, and usually says so once the questions get specific. You never had to accuse anyone; you asked about their work, which is your job.

Design the next assignment so this one cannot repeat

• Require one paragraph connecting the argument to something that happened in class.
• Collect a short in-class start, even ten minutes of drafting, so every take-home essay has an in-class sibling.
• Grade the revision against your comments; outsourcing a revision that must answer specific feedback is harder than writing one.

Scorae's originality read flags responses that look pasted or generated and shows its reasoning, which gives you a place to start looking rather than a verdict. The judgment stays where it belongs, with the person who knows the student.