As a current high school student, who is also a writer for the school newspaper, I can confidently say Grammarly has been a tremendous help in practically every aspect of writing. When I first installed Grammarly, I did research just to find out more about it, and this is what I found.
In a LinkedIn review written by Mahrukh Rana of the fifteen main benefits of Grammarly, the first benefit listed is that Grammarly “corrects grammar and spelling errors.” However, Grammarly is not nearly confined to that one use.
Currently, in 2025, Grammarly has over 30 million daily users, and its fine-honed features to correctly paraphrase, and compose, as well as correct grammar and spelling make it more appealing to prospective users on an everyday basis.
On the Grammarly website, users are able to find the “History of Innovation” which tells the history of how Grammarly came to be. In summary, this innovative app was founded in 2009 by creators Alex Shevchenko and Dima Lider. By 2015, Grammarly had gained its first million users and added new features to help improve writing. As the years passed, Grammarly gained a larger user base and expanded its wide range of writing tools, leading to the Grammarly we all know and love today.
One of Grammarly’s most enticing and useful tools is Grammarly Pro. This premium package with enhanced features costs an extra 12.00/month, compared to the previously free application of Grammarly. The worth of this utilization may be questionable price-wise, yet the features truly are more advanced. However, the more you pay for this enhancement, the more you pay the app to have artificial intelligence write for you.
On the other hand, this easy access to AI through a widely renowned app like Grammarly could be detrimental to the next generation of writers.
Mr. Micah, Margolies, an HBHA English teacher says, “Any tool that you use for anything is probably going to have pros and cons.” Margolies has been teaching eighth and tenth grade English, and this past year additionally taught seventh grade English as well.
Margolies discusses the overall normalization of Grammarly and how the use of it by students may lead to what teachers choose to emphasize teaching.
Margolies explained, “I think we are already seeing that deemphasis,” talking about grammar and spelling skills.
“Sometimes I find that they become overly reliant on it,” says Dr. Kristin Huston when asked how her students interact with Grammarly. Huston is a teacher at HBHA, she teaches sixth-grade English and AP English courses for eleventh and twelfth grades. Huston talked about two approaches she takes for teaching when students have easy access to Grammarly and its AI applications.
When working with sixth-grade English students, Huston “encourage[s] them to develop their judgment ” about when to listen to Grammarly or not. Because they are just entering middle school, they are starting to fully develop their writing voice, and these new writing tools offered by Grammarly Pro may affect that process.
Huston is not as concerned with forming those basic writing skills with her AP students since normally, the AP literature and language tests are written on paper; so, most of the preparation going into those exams includes written work. “Well, you don’t have your computer when you are sitting here with me,” Huston says when working with her AP students. Huston continued on to say that when students are working with her writing with pen and paper, “you (the students) are going to have to make that call (to grammar and spelling).” These moments are truly when Huston sees that “judgment,” she helped cultivate in her early years, to the test.
Gabrielle Sosland a student in Huston’s AP English class explains how she chooses between the suggestions that Grammarly makes, “I don’t always correct those because they are more writer’s opinion.”
Sosland says she utilizes Grammarly more as a “helpful tool rather than just completely using it.” Sosland articulates that she’s using Grammarly to help improve the writing skills she has previously developed, rather than using it as a crutch.
There are so many like Sosland who are the perfect examples of the usefulness Grammarly provides to students who need easy grammar and spelling corrections. However, with the improved applications and more intense tools offered by Grammarly Pro, it is concerning to wonder how this will affect the new generation of writers. This makes it even more important to think fully about how we are using Grammarly, like Huston said, it is truly up to the judgment of the students.
