> There is danger in evaluating for language patterns over its content I agree, but it’s worth noting that that has been done since long before LLMs. Fifteen years ago, I used to teach a graduate course on academic writing pedagogy. The students and I would read research papers on the teaching of academic writing; we also analyzed textbooks and course syllabuses to get an idea about what was actually being done in cl…
Curious about this approach to writing criticism. What authors informed the course? What were the course’s main text(s)?
The focus of the course wasn't writing criticism or particular authors. It was on how writing teachers can teach current and future researchers how to write research papers. A narrow field, perhaps, but at the research university where I worked there was demand for such writing courses, and my class looked at how such classes can be taught at a meta level. Many of the students themselves became writing teachers.
This was all before LLMs. The assumptions behind my class have since been upended, now that easily available chatbots can produce academic writing that, at least at the structural level, is perfectly fine.