Abstract:

If English as a foreign language (EFL) students are expected to improve their writing over the course of a term at university, they must be provided with formative assessment opportunities; this involves establishing multi-step feedback loops that allow learners to respond to instructors’ feedback, rewrite and resubmit for further feedback. Providing effective feedback of this nature has been proven to help improve students’ writing scores, but it also requires more commitment from instructors, both in terms of effort and time, the latter of which is often lacking, especially in a university context. Incorporating AI-powered Automatic Writing Evaluation (AWE) tools may be part of the solution to this problem; this work-in-progress study sets out to compare the effects of AI-generated feedback versus “traditional” instructor feedback on students’ writing proficiency as well as their engagement with the feedback per se. Students in experimental groups will be introduced to the Artificial Intelligence-powered tools Write and Improve and Quillbot to promote improvement in their overall writing proficiency and to help instructors free up valuable time to focus on other aspects of student writing. This study, involving first and second-year students at a private Spanish university, outlines how these tools can be used in the EFL classroom and aims to gather data on the way students engage with feedback through Think Aloud Protocols (TAPs).

Keywords:

AI-powered AWE tools, corrective feedback, computer-generated feedback, writing proficiency, QuillBot, Write & Improve, Think Aloud Protocols (TAPs).