AI-assisted EAP Testing: A Case of Academic IELTS Writing by Iranian EFL Learners

The advent of AI technologies has been influential on the quality of language learning in EFL contexts. A plethora of studies have explored the employment of AI bots in academic writing. Yet, exploring the strategies employed by Iranian EFL learners while using an AI bot to complete academic IELTS writing task ۲ has been underestimated. To address the lacuna, this qualitative study computer-recorded eleven participants’ interactions with AI bot to identify the strategies they employed to complete academic IELTS writing task ۲. The researchers intended to clarify the intricacies of the human-AI interactions and infer the potential contributions of AI bots for academic writing in EFL settings. The findings revealed that despite the employment of several strategies by the participants to compose high-quality writing tasks, none of them fully trusted the AI outputs to use them without post-editing. They considered the AI bot as a writing assistant, used some revised segments of AI responses and added their own words respectively. The pedagogical implications for language teaching in general, and IELTS-oriented practices in particular to take advantage of the emerging AI technologies for better educational outcomes are provided. Moreover, avenues for future research on AI-assisted Language Learning (AILL) are suggested.

کلیدواژه ها:

AI-assisted EAP testing ، AI bot ، academic writing ، learner strategy