The Consequences of Using the Internet for Homework for English Students

Corruption of English Students by the Internet

Now a days students shirk their responsibility of homework, and instead take an easier route. With the spread of the Internet, and easy access to it students have become able to access it to get around doing their homework. This has only become a problem in the latter half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, as the Internet became mainstream. Using the Internet for homework is not limited to anyone place or demographic, but instead happens globally.

Although shirking homework is irresponsible some students have fair reasoning, but most do not.

With the invention of the Internet came the easy access to vast banks of knowledge. When the Internet became widely available in the 1990s students were exposed to a whole new way to do homework. Instead of actually putting in the effort, they could simply look up the answers or book summaries. The availability and amount of knowledge on the Internet has steadily increased, and increases daily.

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While not all students use the Internet for such miscreant activities, most do, and as such it has become a major problem of today.

Students now rarely read books assigned in class. Instead, they go to websites such as SparkNotes or some other similar site. Due to only reading a brief summary of what can be a lengthy chapter, or group of chapters, students’ essays on the subject are often very similar. The problem with relying on a summary written by someone else is that a summary is often flavored by the writer’s feeling towards the subject matter.

Additionally, reading only an overview of the subject makes the reader miss many of the small details. While using a summary can be useful for review, or to reestablish what was read, relying on a summary is foolish.

The reasoning for why students go to sites such as SparkNotes differs from person to person, and some reasons are viable, while others are ill justification. A majority of students use SparkNotes because they are lazy, they do not want to do the work of actually reading the book, and instead they just look up a summary. Others turn to summaries because they are clueless, while this is not an ideal situation the student is at least trying to understand what he read. Others still use online summaries to help establish what they read in their mind by going back over the key points. Another reason for turning to an online summary is because the student is out of time, whether because he forgot to read or he is swamped by other homework some students are forced to simply read a review for want of time. The reasoning behind each person’s use of a website like SparkNotes is varied, and he can have more than one reason for turning to SparkNotes.

Today use of the Internet in place of actual homework is done by the majority of students. There are no restrictions to the students in the lower level classes, which one might assume. But, instead the use of the Internet in place of homework can be seen in all students throughout all grade levels and skill levels. Beyond students, teachers also go online and look at book summaries and to check if students just plagiarized the site.

Use of the Internet for homework is done globally. Evidence of this can be seen by teachers who receive journals or papers with all the same chapter summaries, conclusions, and thoughts. This global occurrence can also be seen globally when students fail to know finer points of a chapter that would not have been covered in an online summary. Students also hear of the widespread use of the Internet instead of actually reading when their colleagues brag about not having actually read a book in years, or since they were in first grade.

The decline from reading the book to just reading an online summary has only began in recent years. Reading only the online summary is done for a variety of reasons, and has only become possible with the invention and widespread use of the Internet. This problem is not limited to only a specific country such as the United State, but is a worldwide dilemma. With the majority of students of all grades and skill levels this issue has gone out of control. A return to actually reading the book needs to be made by students, but it will likely only happen if teachers find some way to incentivize them to read, either through testing or some other means.