EIM-UB Teacher Development

  TESOL Spain Convention 2026, Sevilla Should we even try to assess our students’ writing skills in a world of Gen AI? Ben Knight Head of Language Research and Pedagogy, at Oxford University Press Ben started off his talk by presenting a couple of statistics: - 95% of students report using AI tools in their writing - 94% use AI for assessed assignments He pointed out how writing has changed: as attention spans get shorter, so do text and the more likely they are to be accompanied by image and video. In general, people use AI to write things that they are unmotivated to write (or read) themselves, which – in extreme cases – might lead to a situation like this: There is nothing new in this: we have long been using machines and services to do tasks we don’t want to (wash up, cut grass) BUT why should students bother to learn how to do something if a machine can do it better? One reason, Ben argues, is that writing is a gateway to success. To illustrate this, Ben showed a picture o...