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Teaching with ChatGPT as a linguistically responsive tool for multilingual learners
No full textThis study investigates the instructional applications of ChatGPT and other AI tools in the context of K-12 multilingual learner (ML) education in US public schools. Framed within a translanguaging lens, the research seeks to empirically document how these technologies are used by teachers to support language and literacy learning among MLs. Data was collected from two cohorts of in-service teachers enrolled in a professional development course focused on culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy, with classroom observations and post-observation interviews conducted with 42 teachers across various grade levels and content areas. The findings reveal several key practices, including using ChatGPT to facilitate communication, differentiate content, provide structured support for prompting, and engage in multimodal literacy experimentation. These practices align with dimensions of translanguaging pedagogy, particularly in terms of affordances, production, and co-labor, although gaps remain in the areas of assessment and reflection. The study highlights the potential of AI tools to enhance MLs’ linguistic responsiveness and agency, while also emphasizing the need for critical engagement and explicit instruction to address the challenges and ethical considerations associated with AI integration in education
Ethnolinguistically minoritized women as bilingual coaches in South Korea
No full textEthnolinguistically minoritized women, mostly Southeast Asians married to Korean spouse, are subject to marginalization and subordination in South Korea. The local, subaltern knowledge garnered from their country of origin and the host country is frequently dismissed. One government-led initiative, the Bilingual Coaching Program in South Korea, however, has made it their mission to capitalize on ethnolinguistically minoritized women’s subaltern knowledge. Given that they are marginalized to the degree that they feel pressured not to use their own heritage language with their children, bilingual coaches play a pivotal role by not only promoting bilingualism for ethnolinguistically minoritized populations while uplifting other migrant women’s ways of knowing and being in the South Korean context. We draw on border thinking to explore real challenges six bilingual coaches encounter and how they straddle multiple sociocultural realms, localize bilingual education for ethnolinguistically diverse families and combat prevalent Korean-only ideologies. Findings reveal that the coaches not only empowered themselves, but also minoritized women, who have long yearned to find solidarity in countering marginalization and subordination in South Korea. The findings call for bilingual education centering local and subaltern knowledges, particularly, in under-researched contexts. 
Closing the gap: Intercultural dialogues between undergraduate home students in the UK and international students from China
No full textThis paper presents research on the potential of classroom dialogues to facilitate greater intercultural communication between undergraduate home students in the UK studying Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) and Master’s level students from China. The project put both cohorts together to discuss culture-related topics in Mandarin Chinese. Nine CFL students and 18 international students from China participated in the study. Five meetings were arranged, with the discussions being led by the students. The data collection includes videos of the group discussions and recordings of individual student reflections obtained after each discussion. Byram’s intercultural competence framework was used to analyse the data. The findings indicate that social interaction enables the participants to demonstrate intercultural competence in several dimensions (attitudes, knowledge and skills of discovery and interaction), with skills of interpreting and relating and critical cultural awareness being more limited. The reflections also showed that the participants expressed varying degrees of anxiety about the discussion. CFL students reported their foreign language anxiety, and Chinese students were mainly concerned about potential prejudice against China. Intracultural competence was also discussed in this study
ChatGPT in foreign language education - friend or foe? A quantitative study on pre-service teachers’ beliefs
No full textArtificial intelligence becomes increasingly prominent in digital language teaching and learning and it will gain even more significance in the future of EFL education (cf. Schmidt & Strasser 2022). Therefore, it is key to explore how those who will shape this future perceive the newest development: pre-service EFL teachers. As Zheng puts it: “EFL pre-service teacher beliefs are the focus of change in the process of education” (2009), consequently their perceptions and beliefs regarding this evolving area of teaching and learning are of utmost importance. Focussing on the latest developments in ChatGPT, this paper aims to give a first insight into the potential and limitations of this AI platform from the perspectives of pre-service teachers in Germany. Therefore, this research project explores the following research questions:
o RQ1: Do student teachers consider ChatGPT relevant for their future teaching practice?
o RQ2: In which areas of language education do they see potential changes due to ChatGPT? In what ways?
o RQ3: Are there any differences in the perception of ChatGPT between tech-savvy and non-tech-savvy student teachers?
The research instrument is a combination of the "technology commitment" scale (Neyer et al. 2016) and items developed specifically for this research project. For RQ3, the analysis refers to existing preliminary work that was able to establish a relationship between technology commitment and the probability of technology application (cf. Knetzek & Christensen 2016).
Based on the results of the survey, this paper then aims to offer new perspectives for EFL teacher education and outline concrete reflection activities that further pre-service teachers’ critical engagement with AI in language education
Adopting ChatGPT as a writing buddy in the advanced L2 writing class
No full textSince its release, ChatGPT has raised concerns in many teaching contexts given its threat to reliably evaluating learners’ knowledge and skills. Within task-based pedagogy, however, this technology opens new avenues for second language (L2) teaching when adopting the technology as a writing buddy. Our study explores how ChatGPT as a model impacts the revision process of advanced L2 writers of German. Twenty-two university students participated in a two-week classroom-based intervention, producing two summaries of popular-scientific texts in L2 German. After writing a first draft, they compared their summaries with texts produced by ChatGPT (3.5) and revised, where necessary, their own text. In this paper, we analyze all students’ rubrics-based ratings of the ChatGPT models and present data of six focus students’ screen-recorded revision processes that we coded for revision focus, source, and success. Results reveal students’ growing awareness of characteristics of ChatGPT-output, such as linguistic accuracy and fluency, as well as its flaws in content provision. Revision data demonstrate that students skillfully made use of the models to improve their own texts. To conclude, our study provides evidence that using ChatGPT as models in writing and revision processes can stimulate higher-order thinking in the revision process of advanced L2 students
Exploring the potential of AI for pragmatics instruction
No full textLarge language models (LLM) (e.g., ChatGPT) have garnered massive attention due to their potential to serve as interactive partners for a wide range of teaching and learning activities. In instructed second language acquisition, one potential use of LLMs is for pragmatics instruction. The current study sought to assess ChatGPT’s suitability for this task by analyzing its output in response to 144 DCTs (discourse completion tasks), which test a language learner’s ability to create apologies, requests, and refusals over differential levels of social and power distance, and degrees of imposition. Quantitatively, ChatGPT produced significantly shorter apologies than the other two speech acts (p < .001, R2 = .49), utilizing fewer pragmatic strategies (p < .001, R2 = .38). Closer social distance and greater imposition also resulted in longer responses, with higher imposition also eliciting ChatGPT to use more pragmatic strategies. Qualitatively, human raters scored ChatGPT’s apologies significantly lower in terms of their appropriateness, politeness, and language use, despite there being no statistical differences in ratings for requests and refusals. The main pedagogical implications are that, while ChatGPT offers an attractive option for students looking for more language exposure and interaction outside of the classroom, some degree of skepticism is still required due to its quantitative and qualitative inconsistencies
Turkish EFL learners’ knowledge, perception, and production of suprafixes as part of lexical competence
No full textVocabulary and grammar are essential to language proficiency (Richards, 2015). Some word families and grammatical categories can only be distinguished by prosodic properties such as suprafixes. In English, specific noun/adjective-verb pairs, sometimes called disyllabic words, receive primary stress on different syllables. Typically, nouns receive trochaic stress, while verbs receive iambic stress. Research shows that suprafixes are difficult for language learners from diverse linguistic and prosodic backgrounds. Given the scarcity of research in specific contexts (e.g., Turkish EFL), this study explored Turkish EFL learners’ suprafixational knowledge, perception, and production. Participants were B1-level preparatory school students of a prominent state university. Data were collected through a test of knowledge (n=110), a test of perception (n=80), and a test of production (n=50). Results showed poor knowledge, perception, and production of suprafixes among Turkish EFL learners. Minor variations in suprafixational competence were observed in males and females. Additionally, different noun-verb pairs posed a challenge for both genders. The results were discussed, and recommendations for future research were made. The study concludes that Turkish EFL learners must receive suprasegmental training focusing on suprafixes
The contribution of vocabulary breadth and depth to narrative writing ability: A partial least squares structural equation modelling approach
No full textDespite the well-established role of lexis in proficiency in the four skills, a great deal of research has focused on the importance of vocabulary breadth and depth in reading. Therefore, the neglect of productive skills has motivated recent calls to inspect the impact of lexical dimensions on writing ability. Using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS SEM), this study examines the contributions of vocabulary breadth and depth aspects to EFL learners’ narrative writing ability. For this purpose, the researchers administered the Updated Vocabulary Levels Test (the UVLT), the Productive Vocabulary Levels Test (the PVLT), the Word Associates Test (the WAT), and a narrative writing task to 77 EFL undergraduate students. The participants’ scripts were scored, following IELTS analytical band descriptors. Results of the PLS SEM disclosed that vocabulary size and depth explained around 45% of the variance in the writing scores of the subjects. They also revealed that, among the variables examined, receptive vocabulary size was the only statistically significant factor that contributed the most to writing ability. The implications for writing assessment and instruction are discussed
Enhancing students’ writing competence and 21st-century skills simultaneously via infographics
No full textThe accelerating pace of technological trends has numerous reflections in education. Accordingly, various tools have been utilized to reap their benefits in English classes. Among others, infographics, which combine text with visually stimulating images, stand out thanks to their advantages, such as being concise and academically rewarding. Although their effects have been studied worldwide, a gap in the literature has been observed in measuring infographics’ effects on developing students’ writing and certain 21st-century skills simultaneously in Iraq. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to gauge the role of infographics in improving university students’ writing competence and 21st-century skills. Having chosen 30 freshman students through convenience sampling from a private university in Erbil, Iraq, in the spring semester of the 2023-2024 academic year, they underwent the treatment spanning 10 weeks about writing essays. Data collection encompassed writing exams, questionnaires, and interviews in this mixed methods research design study. Data were analyzed using either SPSS 29 or NVivo. Control group students received writing instruction based on the common curriculum, whereas experimental group students’ lessons were expanded with infographics. The findings unleashed that infographic-enriched writing education yielded better results in terms of writing exams with a .002 p-value. Complementary findings also showed that certain 21st-century skills, such as critical thinking and taking initiative, were promoted. On the other hand, the achievement of the control group students was far from noticeable. The findings of this study may have various implications for interested parties who plan to integrate infographics into English classes harmoniously
Leveraging the potential of ChatGPT as an automated writing evaluation (AWE) tool: Students' feedback literacy development and AWE tools integration framework
No full textThis study examines the use of ChatGPT, in conjunction with other applications, Grammarly and Quillbot, as an Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) tool in a Recount and Narrative essay course for 18 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students in Indonesia. The primary objective was to investigate the impact of these tools on the development of learners' feedback literacy. A single, qualitative case study design was employed, gathering students' voices through a semi-structured interview, reflective journals, and artifacts comprising writing e-portfolios and the feedback evidence. The data analysis utilized an inductive-deductive approach to identify themes and patterns in the qualitative data. The findings revealed that the AWE tools complemented each other in supporting almost all aspects of students' feedback literacy, with "feedback processing" being the aspect that ChatGPT could potentially enhance or diminish, contingent upon students' feedback-seeking behavior. Furthermore, as the result of the inductive coding of the qualitative data, the study offers an "AWE Tools Integration Framework," namely six elements that educators could consider when incorporating AWE tools, notably the generative AI, in their writing classes. This study concluded with a call for greater support of students' digital literacy, equal access to technology, and ethical use of Artificial Intelligence in the classroom.