Content area

Abstract

ChatGPT, the newest pre-trained large language model, has recently attracted unprecedented worldwide attention. Its exceptional performance in understanding human language and completing a variety of tasks in a conversational way has led to heated discussions about its implications for and use in education. This exploratory study represents one of the first attempts to examine the possible role of ChatGPT in facilitating the teaching and learning of writing English as a Foreign Language (EFL). We examined ChatGPT’s potential to support EFL teachers’ feedback on students’ writing. To reach this goal, we first investigated ChatGPT’s performance in generating feedback on EFL students’ argumentative writing. Fifty English argumentative essays composed by Chinese undergraduate students were collected and used as feedback targets. ChatGPT and five Chinese EFL teachers offered feedback on the content, organisation, and language aspects of the essays. We compared ChatGPT- and teacher-generated feedback in terms of their amount and type. The results showed that ChatGPT produced a significantly larger amount of feedback than teachers and that compared with teacher feedback, which mainly focused on content-related and language-related issues, ChatGPT distributed its attention relatively equally among the three feedback foci (i.e., content, organisation, and language). Our results also indicated that ChatGPT and teachers displayed tendencies towards using different feedback types when evaluating different aspects of students’ writing. Additionally, we examined EFL teachers’ perceptions of using ChatGPT-generated feedback to support their own feedback. The five teachers reported both positive and negative perceptions of the features of ChatGPT feedback and the relation between ChatGPT and teacher feedback. To foster EFL students’ writing skills, we suggest that teachers collaborate with ChatGPT in generating feedback on student writing.

Details

Title
To resist it or to embrace it? Examining ChatGPT’s potential to support teacher feedback in EFL writing
Author
Guo, Kai 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Wang, Deliang 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

1  The University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Education, Hong Kong, China (GRID:grid.194645.b) (ISNI:0000 0001 2174 2757) 
Pages
8435-8463
Publication year
2024
Publication date
May 2024
Publisher
Springer Nature B.V.
ISSN
13602357
e-ISSN
15737608
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-023-12146-0
ProQuest document ID
3054316433
Copyright
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2023. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.