ESL tertiary learners’ engagement in ChatGPT-assisted second language writing

This study used a within-groups design to investigate how ChatGPT-assisted revision affected tertiary ESL learners’ writing quality and their engagement. Data from written texts, chat logs, stimulated recalls, and interviews revealed that using ChatGPT significantly improved learners’ writing quality, particularly in lexical complexity, grammatical accuracy, cohesion, and style. Learners also exhibited diverse engagement profiles and variation in engagement levels, marked by different approaches to the use of ChatGPT (i.e. behavioural engagement), various cognitive processes (i.e. cognitive engagement), and mixed emotional responses (i.e. emotional engagement), which arguably contributes to the imp­rovement of their text quality. These findings offer implications for integrating ChatGPT into L2 writing instruction. This study explored how using ChatGPT during writing revision influenced the writing quality and learning engagement of university students with English as a second language. The same group of learners completed one independent writing task and a ChatGPT-assisted writing task. We analysed their essays, chat logs with ChatGPT, and follow-up interviews. The results show that using ChatGPT significantly helped improve learners’ writing quality, especially their vocabulary use, grammatical accuracy, coherence, and writing style. Learners also showed different ways and levels of engagement with ChatGPT-assisted revision. They used various approaches to interact with the tool, demonstrated different thinking processes, and reported mixed emotional responses. These patterns of engagement might have contributed to improvements in writing quality. The findings provide implications for integrating ChatGPT in second language writing classes.