The impact of using DeepL Translator on Chinese EFL students’ story writing

Abstract Story writing is a complex task for EFL students. With the rise of various writing assistance tools enabled by the development of AI, it has become crucial to explore how AI-assisted tools can alleviate the challenges students face in story writing. This study investigated the impact of using DeepL Translator, a cutting-edge AI-assisted tool, on Chinese EFL students’ story writing, evaluating both form and content, and analyzing students’ attitudes toward these tools. Based on the translanguaging approach, thirty university students first wrote their stories in Chinese, then drafted them in English. They used DeepL Translator to translate their Chinese stories into English and compared these translations with their original English drafts to create revised versions. Computational analysis and human raters were employed to evaluate students’ writing products. Surveys and interviews were used to obtain students’ attitudes. Results showed significant improvements in linguistic form, including syntactic and lexical complexity, fluency, and accuracy, assessed using the CALF framework. Additionally, content quality was significantly improved. This study also found that DeepL Translator provided significant support for lower proficiency students. Participants expressed overall satisfaction with DeepL Translator despite some challenges. This study highlights the role of AI-assisted tools in language learning and offers practical suggestions for language pedagogy and future research.