ChatGPT’s Potential to Enhance Language Learners’ Proximal Development through Dialogic Interaction

Dynamic Assessment (DA) is predicated on the dialogic interaction between teachers and learners, emphasizing the fusion of assessment and instruction and revealing learners' Zone of Proximal Development. Despite its promising contributions, DA in actual classrooms can be overwhelming for most teachers. To address this issue, this original study showcases the interaction between learners and ChatGPT-3.5. Participants were L2 writers in an EFL setting, and the targeted genre was argumentative writing. For four weeks, the learners produced argumentative texts on different topics, and they used ChatGPT as a personalized feedback and instruction provider. They initially used the same prompt, and following the ChatGPT-generated feedback, participants were free to seek further assistance. After each session, they shared the chat-log with the researchers, and reflection sessions were conducted to delve deeper into the learners' interaction and their underlying reasons for seeking additional help. The findings reported ChatGPT’s potential to foster users’ ZPD and enhance their improvement in writing since each participant’s interactional patterns, microgenesis, and transfer abilities were in accord.