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All tasks · Writing and language · 6 prompts

AI prompts for essay planning and feedback

An AI assistant can write an essay in seconds, and that is exactly the use to avoid for school and college work. An essay handed in under your name must be yours, and teachers increasingly recognise machine writing. The honest and more useful way is to let the assistant be a coach: it helps you plan, questions your argument and points out weak sentences, and you do the writing.

The prompts

Help me plan

I have to write an essay of about [NUMBER] words on: [TOPIC OR QUESTION]

My own first thoughts: [YOUR IDEAS, IN ANY ORDER]

Do not write the essay. Help me plan it: suggest a clear main point, an order for my ideas in four or five paragraphs, and say which of my ideas is weakest and why. Ask me two questions that would make my thinking sharper.

Replace the parts in [CAPITALS] first, or after pasting.

Feedback on my draft

Here is my essay on [TOPIC] for [CLASS OR COURSE]. Give feedback under four headings: Main point (is it clear?), Structure (does each paragraph have one job?), Evidence and examples (where are they thin?), Language (three repeated problems). Quote the sentence you are referring to. Do not rewrite the essay.

[PASTE YOUR ESSAY]

Replace the parts in [CAPITALS] first, or after pasting.

Improve my introduction

This is my introduction. Tell me what works and what does not. Then show me two ways to improve it that keep my meaning and my voice. Explain what you changed and why, so that I can do it myself next time.

[PASTE YOUR INTRODUCTION]

Replace the parts in [CAPITALS] first, or after pasting.

Test my argument

My essay argues that [YOUR MAIN POINT]. My reasons are: [LIST THEM].

Act as a fair critic. Give the strongest objections someone could raise against each reason. Do not answer the objections for me. Then tell me which reason is strongest and which needs more support.

Replace the parts in [CAPITALS] first, or after pasting.

Grammar and clarity only

Correct only the grammar, spelling and punctuation in the text below. Do not change my words, ideas or style. List each correction with a one line reason, so that I can learn from it.

[PASTE YOUR TEXT]

Replace the parts in [CAPITALS] first, or after pasting.

A better conclusion

Here is my essay without a conclusion. Do not write one. Tell me in three points what a good conclusion for this essay should do, and which sentence in my essay states my main point most clearly, so that I can build on it.

[PASTE YOUR ESSAY]

Replace the parts in [CAPITALS] first, or after pasting.

How to adapt these prompts

Say who will read it. A class 9 essay, a college assignment and a competition entry are judged differently.
Give the question exactly as set, and any marking criteria you were given. Feedback improves a lot when the assistant knows what is being marked.
Ask for one kind of help at a time. Structure first, language last. There is no point polishing a paragraph you will later cut.
For Hindi or Punjabi essays, paste the draft and ask for feedback in the same language.
Keep the "do not rewrite" line. Without it, most assistants return a new essay that is no longer yours.

Keep it your own work

Find out what your school, college or examination allows. Some permit help with grammar, some permit none, and handing in work written by an assistant can be treated as cheating. When in doubt, ask your teacher, and say honestly what help you used.

Do not ask an assistant for facts, quotations or references and paste them in unchecked. Assistants are known to invent quotations, book titles and statistics that look real. Every fact and every quotation in your essay should come from a source you have seen yourself.

The real gain from an essay is the thinking. Feedback makes you better at that. A finished essay from a machine does not.

Related tasks

This is an independent site. It is not connected with any company that makes AI assistants. The prompts are plain text and can be used in any AI chat assistant. An AI assistant can give wrong or made-up answers: check anything important before you rely on it, and do not paste private details into a prompt.