Practicing with AI improved unassisted writing skill more than practicing with Google Search for cover letter examples and tips¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r3 · q4 · i2 medium
Currency · newest study 2025 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q4 i2 On a no-AI writing test, participants who practiced with AI wrote higher-quality cover letters than those who practiced with Google Search (d=0.46). → Benjamin Lira 2025

Evidence¶

Benjamin Lira 2025¶

Benjamin Lira, Todd Rogers, Daniel G. Goldstein, Lyle Ungar, and Angela L. Duckworth. (2025). Coach not crutch: Evidence that AI can improve writing skill despite reducing effort. https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.02880 doi:10.48550/arxiv.2502.02880

q4 · i2 · causal · r3

Pre-registered randomized experiment (N=2,997, Prolific). After practicing, all participants took a no-AI writing test. Participants "wrote higher-quality cover letters" than Google Search (d=0.46); editors averaged 25 years of experience.

"participants who had practiced with the AI tool wrote higher-quality cover letters than those who had practiced with Google Search (d= 0.46,p<.001), and even outperformed those who had practiced with personalized feedback from professional editors (d= 0.20,p<.001)"

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Writing Skills — outcome: instruction changes it

Related Claims¶

• AI-generated rewrites of cover letters were rated higher for writing quality and more likely to secure hypothetical interviews than rewrites by professional human editors — related
• Practicing cover letter writing with an AI tool improved unassisted writing skill more than practicing without AI or not practicing, with benefits persisting one day later — related
• Offloading work to AI costs learning: students given answers did well in practice but scored lower on an unassisted exam — related
• Editors observe GenAI has improved surface correctness of manuscripts and increased submissions, but this does not lead to better research quality — related
• Merely viewing an AI-generated writing example improved writing skill as much as actively practicing with the AI tool, with benefits persisting one day later — related