Regulating AI Translation Tools Across the Four Strands: EFL Teachers' Practices and Rationales
Regulating AI Translation Tools Across the Four Strands: EFL Teachers' Practices and Rationales

Summary/Abstract: The rapid integration of AI-powered translation tools into EFL classrooms has introduced pedagogical challenges for teachers to maintain meaningful language learning across different instructional purposes. In this study, the term AI translation tools refers to digital tools that support translation, paraphrasing, or multilingual meaning-making in language learning contexts. Grounded in Four Strands framework, this qualitative multiple-case study explores how tertiary-level EFL teachers regulate students' use of AI translation tools, the pedagogical rationales underlying their decisions, and the challenges they encounter in practice. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with ten EFL teachers. They were then analysed using a theory-informed thematic analysis with a hybrid deductive-inductive approach. The Four Strands framework informed the main analytical categories, while strand-specific subthemes were developed iteratively from the data. The findings reveal strand-sensitive regulation of AI translation tools. Teachers tended to allow selective use of AI translation in meaning-focused input to support comprehension, imposed conditional and phase-sensitive restrictions in meaning-focused output to preserve learner ownership, tightly controlled or analytically reframed AI use in language-focused learning to maintain cognitive engagement, and consistently prohibited AI translation in fluency development to protect automaticity and processing speed. Teachers' regulatory practices were shaped by ongoing tensions between access to meaning and learner dependency, pedagogical support and learner autonomy, and task efficiency and learning depth. The study proposes a strand-based, pedagogically principled model for regulating AI translation in EFL instruction.

• Details
• Contents