The GALL of it all: Grading and teaching in the age of GenAI-assisted language learning

I watched the young man, dressed in scuffy denim and T-shirt, dark curly head bent in concentration, juggling a book and a stack of papers on his lap as the subway lurched through the darkness.At first glance, I thought that he was working on his assignment, writing quickly and intently, in a race with the subway and its inevitable stops.As a load of passengers spewed into the car, he shifted slightly to accommodate the new crush, and it was then that I saw varied and youthful handwriting on his pages.He was grading those papers, not composing his own (Miller, 1986, p. 26).Much current exploration of GenAI-assisted language learning (yes, GALL) seems determinedly opposed to the idea of young men juggling books and papers in trains.Scholars want students to be free from the need to wait and the fear of embarrassment (Barrot, 2023;Hong, 2023;Godwin-Jones, 2022).The passage below echoes the optimism expressed by most scholars exploring GenAI's affordances:Best of all, the feedback is instant, unlike teacher feedback, which understandably takes time by the time students receive their feedback, they might have completely forgotten everything from the previous writing.All in all, ChatGPT is a free and more efficient alternative to human tutors.(Hong, 2023, p.