“It’s like a teacher”: undergraduate students’ experiences of using ChatGPT as a writing support tool in an ESL classroom

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) such as ChatGPT into teaching and learning has become a significant area of interest in higher education as it has significantly reshaped students writing practices. Studies suggest that it has the potential to dismantle language barriers and foster multilingualism and linguistic inclusivity in multilingual writing classrooms (Malik et al., 2023). However, while the use of AI has been proven to be a significant tool in enhancing students’ communicative competence (Hasanein and Sobaih, 2023), particularly for students from non-native English-speaking backgrounds, there are widespread concerns among the academic community that AI tools may negatively impact academic integrity, creativity, and critical thinking skills in academic writing (Neumann et al., 2023). To address these concerns, instead of discouraging the use of AI, we conducted a 12-week intervention academic writing course where we integrated ChatGPT in the course. The purpose of the study was to explore its use as a writing support tool as well as a strategy to foster students’ responsible use of the tool. At the end of the course, focus group interviews were carried out with students to explore their experiences with the use of ChatGPT as a writing support tool. The findings of the focus group interviews gave us pedagogical insights into how educators can leverage the affordances of AI in the teaching of academic writing and how AI can be used to enhance equality and level writing expectations for students who come from non- native English-speaking backgrounds.