An Inspector Calls is one of the most heavily revised texts in the country, which means students have a lot of ready-made material available. Study guides, revision sites and chatbots all offer polished paragraphs on Mr. Birling, Sheila and the Inspector. Teachers who mark the same play every year soon learn to recognize the results.

The problem is not always dishonesty. Many students copy phrases from a guide because they think that is how essays are supposed to sound. Others use AI to help them get started and end up submitting something that is not their own thinking.

Responding well means being able to spot the signs, and having a calm process for dealing with them.

The points below are guides to look for, not proof of anything.

Signs that an essay may not be the student's own

The clearest sign is a mismatch between the polish of the writing and what you know of the student. Beyond that, generic essays tend to share certain features. They make broad claims that could apply to any class, use the same well-known quotations, and lack the small oddities that come from personal interpretation.

• A sudden, unexplained jump in vocabulary and sentence complexity
• Analysis that stays general and never mentions specific staging or lines from your lessons
• Context paragraphs that recite facts without linking them to the question
• Perfectly balanced paragraphs with similar lengths and neat topic sentences
• Quotations or details that do not match the edition or discussion in your class

Start with a conversation

The most reliable step is to ask the student to talk through their essay. Questions such as why they chose a particular quotation or what they meant by a phrase quickly show whether the ideas are theirs. This can be done kindly and without accusation.

A short in-class writing task on the same topic also gives you a baseline for comparison.

Design tasks that are harder to outsource

Tasks tied to classroom discussion, personal response or a specific production are difficult to copy. Asking students to include a reflection on how their understanding changed, or to respond to a particular line from a class debate, makes generic material less useful. Planning stages that you can see also help.

Setting clear expectations about acceptable use at the start of the unit prevents many problems before they begin.

Keep the process fair and documented

Detection tools can be unreliable and should never be the only basis for a decision. Keep your own notes on what you observed, follow your school's policy, and give students a chance to explain. Rubric-based tools such as GraideMind can help by showing where an essay is generic or lacks specific engagement with the text, but the judgment about what to do belongs to you.

The aim is a classroom where students understand that their own reading of the play is what earns credit.