EXPLORING CHATGPT'S IMPACT ON ESL WRITING PROFICIENCY: AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH
EXPLORING CHATGPT'S IMPACT ON ESL WRITING PROFICIENCY: AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH

Summary/Abstract: Despite their use in the classroom remaining controversial, generative AI chatbots that utilize LLMs have revolutionized all aspects of learning, formal and informal, and are proving remarkably useful in a second-language setting even if not primarily designed for foreign language learning. Across the globe, students' and faculty members' written English has been lifted to a new level as the widely accessible AI text-generation tools help non-native speakers produce natural-sounding idiomatic texts. The role of advanced LLM-powered chatbots in English language teaching has sparked a wave of research in recent years and the present study joins these efforts. It reports on an experiment which examined the effectiveness of ChatGPT use for students' writing tasks, featuring 47 students of different ESL proficiency levels. Findings show that ChatGPT represents a beneficial intervention in ESL writing, particularly for lower-proficiency users, most notably improving users' grammar, vocabulary, organization, and coherence. Our results suggest that ChatGPT use may increase writing time, though this requires further confirmation. The study thus explores the pedagogical implications of ChatGPT and similar chatbots for ESL writing instruction, and both aligns with and challenges some of the research conducted so far, proposing a subsequent longitudinal study to explore the long-term L2 gains of using chatbots as writing scaffolds.

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