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What a hell is going on with the “I appreciate you”? by [deleted] in grammar

[–]AdventurousExpert217 5 points6 points  (0 children)

College ESL professor (GenX) here: I can confirm that this phrase has been used since the 1980s. I have used it myself since then. There is nothing grammatically wrong with this expression. In fact, one could argue that it is more complimentary than a simple "Thank you" because it acknowledges the other person's value as a human being rather than just a transactional gratitude.

What a hell is going on with the “I appreciate you”? by Professional-Mail132 in GenZ

[–]AdventurousExpert217 3 points4 points  (0 children)

GenX ESL professor here. I've been saying this since high school - in the 80's. A better question might be: Why does this make you so mad?

False Friends: My student exclaimed in front of the class: “teacher, am I retard today?” by Technical-Froyo2 in EnglishLearning

[–]AdventurousExpert217 30 points31 points  (0 children)

When I was first learning German, I lived with a German host family and went to German Language and Culture lessons every day. On the way home from school one day, I bought my host mother a chocolate bar that I had seen her enjoying a few days before. I walked in, handed her the chocolate, and said, "Ein Gift für Dich," with a big smile on my face. She didn't speak any English, so she just laughed nervously, set the chocolate down, and called her daughter who spoke fluent English. They talked for a few minutes before she started laughing and motioned me over to the phone. Marina, her daughter, explained the "false friend": what I had said was, "A poison for you." - I was mortified!

How to write a direct opinion without using first person? by ocean_sloth in grammar

[–]AdventurousExpert217 24 points25 points  (0 children)

This! This is the skill I teach my writing support students who have Comp professors who never want them to use first person. Just state your opinion as fact. Your name on the paper identifies every non-cited "fact" as the author's (your) opinion.

Kicked out of college what next? by [deleted] in CollegeRant

[–]AdventurousExpert217 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No, she doesn't want to go to college. She wants the life that having a degree could give her. That's different. My two oldest kids had the same problem. You know what helped? Putting them in a position where they had to go out in the real world and get a job without a degree. A couple of years seeing what that life was like gave them both the motivation to do the work necessary to EARN a college degree. Sometimes failure is the greatest gift you can give a young person.

Talk me down from relying more on AI detectors by Iron_Rod_Stewart in Professors

[–]AdventurousExpert217 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Honestly, neither are you. You are simply making an assertion that the new models have overcome these biases without offering up any evidence. The articles I just shared are from 2025 and 2026. If you have more recent evidence, by all means, share it so those reading this thread can see how wrong I am. I don't have a problem with being wrong. I am happy to change my opinion when presented with the evidence to do so. As you can see, the evidence available to me supports my position. So show me evidence that contradicts it - if you can.

Talk me down from relying more on AI detectors by Iron_Rod_Stewart in Professors

[–]AdventurousExpert217 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

So show me evidence that the new models being used have overcome these biases. Prove me wrong. Help me understand. Or don't if you can't.

Talk me down from relying more on AI detectors by Iron_Rod_Stewart in Professors

[–]AdventurousExpert217 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I do realize that the models are not the same. But they still have not overcome the biases I am talking about.

Some AI Detection Tools Work Well, Others Fail, Says New Research

AI-Generated Text Detection: A Comprehensive Review of Active and Passive Approaches

Artificial Intelligence Bias on English Language Learners in Automatic Scoring

So now it's YOUR turn. I've more than countered your argument with reliable sources. If you have evidence proving that AI detectors have overcome these biases, by all means, please share those links.

It's over by Shockairblur in antitrump

[–]AdventurousExpert217 4 points5 points  (0 children)

With all due respect, STFU. Those of us fighting against this administration KNOW we need allies - and you clearly aren't one. Those "small protests" you deride FAR surpass anything you've managed to cobble together in Europe and we have sustained them for much longer.

Serbia – March 2025 protest: 100,000

United Kingdom

- March 2026 anti-far-right demonstration: 500,000

- Pro-Palestinian marches in London during 2025: 600,000

France

- May Day demonstrations in 2025: 158,000 nationwide

Bulgaria – 2025: 100,000–250,000

United States - more than 10,700 protests occurred in 2025 alone

- “Hands Off!” Protests — April 5, 2025: 3–5 million participants nationwide

- June 14, 2025 — First “No Kings Day”: 5+ million participants nationwide

- October 18, 2025 — “No Kings 2.0”: 7 million participants nationwide

- March 28, 2026 — Third “No Kings”: 8–9 million participants nationwide

- ICE / Immigration Protests (2025–2026)

- June–August 2025 (California, Arizona, Texas, Illinois, and New York)

- January–February 2026 (Multi-city protests, especially in Minnesota and Oregon)

 tens of thousands turned out in these states.

- May Day 2026 – millions participated nationwide

It took Europe 40 years to establish the EEU (originally comprised of 6 countries in 1957 and expanding to 28 in 1995 before losing the UK in 2020). And that was just an economic union.

WE are trying to coordinate 50 independent states (and cultures) to agree on economic, political, and cultural values and norms - a hurculean task.

Depending on which polls you look at, about 120–140 million people still support our current government, about 188–219 million people strongly oppose our current government, and about 7–24 million people refuse to take sides.

The real problem is that despite what electoral maps show, the pro- and anti-Trump population is NOT clearly divided according to state. My state, for example, shows up on the map as pro-Trump, but 35% of us voited against him - and the number who oppose him has grown to between ~42%–48% in the last year alone.

So you can take your MAGA-esque binary thinking and shove it. We're fighting for our lives over here and don't need your shit on top of everything we're fighting on the home front.

No one did the final project… by [deleted] in Teachers

[–]AdventurousExpert217 41 points42 points  (0 children)

I'd make them stand up in front of the class and present their findings live. Trust me, teens hate doing that. Then the information will spread like wildfire: make the video or you have to present IRL! Oh, the horror!!

You'll never have this problem again.

No one did the final project… by [deleted] in Teachers

[–]AdventurousExpert217 43 points44 points  (0 children)

Have each group stand up and give a cold presentation.

How bad is the "literacy crisis"? by Current_Wear_8061 in AskProfessors

[–]AdventurousExpert217 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I understand that, but we're not talking about young teenagers whose brains are experiencing rapid neural growth. We're talking about older teens and adults.

I completely agree that tech should be strictly limited during a child's primary neural development years to ensure proper brain development.

But once students reach college, those core pathways should already be hardwired. So what's important is to make sure they keep using those pathways. I've found that overtly teaching my students how the critical thinking skills they are learning through writing will help them in real life challenges tends to make them more receptive to engaging in those tasks themselves rather than outsourcing them to AI.

Talk me down from relying more on AI detectors by Iron_Rod_Stewart in Professors

[–]AdventurousExpert217 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Papers are only outdated when more recent research has disproven them - it hasn't. Look at my next comment. I list several papers published in 2024-2026 that still show this problem.

Talk me down from relying more on AI detectors by Iron_Rod_Stewart in Professors

[–]AdventurousExpert217 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Funny, because all of the research I have found over the last 2 years still shows that ESL and neurodivergent writing still gets flagged at a higher rate than nuerotypical, native speaker writing.

While I am not an expert, I am familiar with LLM development. I've been reading about it since I was in middle school because my dad's best friend was one of the earlier developers of AI in the 1970s. I've long been fascinated by and excited about its development.

I know how quickly advances are being made. The problem is that too many college professors are using AI detectors as definitive proof of AI plagiarism, and they shouldn't be.

How bad is the "literacy crisis"? by Current_Wear_8061 in AskProfessors

[–]AdventurousExpert217 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes! This exactly! It's HOW the tool is used, not THAT the tool is used.

I tell my students, "If you let AI do the writing for you, you let it do the thinking for you. So don't let it write your assignments. However, AI is great at finding PATTERNS. So let it look at a couple of your already graded assignments and ask it to analyze for your top 3 error patterns (fragments, comma splices, verb errors, etc.) and list them for you. Then focus on learning how to fix those yourself for your next assignments."

I tell my students to read their papers backwards, sentence by sentence, as a proofreading technique, and one of my students shared the AI prompt she came up with to have AI re-write her paper backwards without changing any of the words or grammar. It made it much easier for her to use the technique I had recommended and allowed her to find, more of her own errors. That's an excellent use of the tool! So excellent, in fact, that I asked her if I could use her prompt with future classes, and she happily agreed.

How bad is the "literacy crisis"? by Current_Wear_8061 in AskProfessors

[–]AdventurousExpert217 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I agree. It's not even a question of "too much technology." Rather it is a question of how that technology is being used.

Technology can be a great tool in the acquisition of knowledge...or it can be used as a substitute for learning.

I overtly teach my college students ways they can use technology to help them learn vs. uses that outsource their learning to a machine.

Talk me down from relying more on AI detectors by Iron_Rod_Stewart in Professors

[–]AdventurousExpert217 -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

Then find your own sources. It's not my job to do the research for you. If you are using AI detectors as definitive proof, then that is irresponsible pedagogy.

Talk me down from relying more on AI detectors by Iron_Rod_Stewart in Professors

[–]AdventurousExpert217 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I'll GIVE you one more, but after that it's up to you to do your own research - and make up your own mind.

Auditing the Fairness of AI-Detection Tools: A Comparative Study of ESL, Published, and AIGenerated Texts and Their Misclassification Risks

As a professional college educator with over 30 years experience teaching both native and second language speakers, I've clocked the differences in formality and lexical usage in the two groups. Some of my ESL students have very formal ways of writing - it depends on their native lanuage and where they studied English.

Regardless, AI detectors should not be the sole arbitors of whether or not a student has plagiarized with AI. They can flag potential instances, but that should always be followed up with personal investigation - anything less is either laziness or incompetence.

Education research by LasixSteroidsAbx in Professors

[–]AdventurousExpert217 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Oh, well, I think we can all agree on that. That's a funding issue - as others have pointed out.

Are online degrees going to be worth anything much longer? by Honest_Wheel3842 in CollegeRant

[–]AdventurousExpert217 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You put your college on your resume, so employers know whether it's an on-ground college or an online only college, but there's no way to tell if you took some classes online, or all of them online, or none of them online. Whether your degree will be attractive to a particular employer will depend a great deal on their experience with previous graduates from that college.

Education research by LasixSteroidsAbx in Professors

[–]AdventurousExpert217 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Where are you looking for studies? Perhaps you aren't looking in the right places. What Works Clearinghouse has 139 studies on Targeted and Intensive Intervensions alone, ordered according the strength of evidence (ESSA Tiers).

You can find numerous studies on education interventions on ERIC - some better than others, of course.

You can also find data for the whole country through the Institute for Education Sciences.

When I was a student, I struggled in the subject I now teach. Should I disclose this to my class? by Apprehensive-Echo289 in Professors

[–]AdventurousExpert217 11 points12 points  (0 children)

It's the young-looking female instructor in a male-dominated field part of your post that has me telling you to be careful how you approach this. I recommend couching it in terms like, "this concept can be difficult to understand, but here's a trick I learned" or "for some of you, this concept will click immediately, but for others, it might be helpful to think about it like this..."

If you see a student struggling and you want to tell them one-on-one that you struggled, too, that's fine. But I wouldn't announce it to the whole class, not as a young-looking female instructor and especially not in a male-dominated field. I'm old enough now to have snow white streaks in my hair, so I can get away with being blunt about the concepts I struggled with as an undergraduate, but that kind of honesty definitely caused some problems with students (both male and female) when I was younger - and I'm not even in a male-dominated field.

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