EFL Students' Attitudes Towards the Potential of AI Writing Assisting Tools in Enhancing their Academic Writing:

Abstract

The current study investigates English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ attitudes toward the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) writing-assisting tools in enhancing their academic writing. Thus, the present research assumes that EFL students perceive AI writing assisting tools' potential on their academic writing level either negatively or positively. A hybrid approach descriptive-exploratory was used, where a survey questionnaire was adopted as a data-gathering tool to test this hypothesis and achieve the research objectives. It was distributed to (231) students out of (321) population of both Master one and Master two students of English at the Department of Letter and Languages, university of 08 May 1945-Guelma. The findings revealed that when the majority used the AI-powered writing assisting tools, favorable outcomes were yielded in improving their written products, and they positively reacted to these tools' potential to enhance their academic writing. While also exhibited limitations and drawbacks in maintaining ethical and accurate pieces of writing, affecting their creativity and self-dependence, which made students show some negative concerns about these tools’ potential. As a result, it has been suggested to use the AI writing assisting tools simultaneously during the writing process following certain guidelines to preserve the creativity and originality of the writing. Furthermore, some recommendations were proposed to streamline the usage of AI writing-assisting tools in the process of teaching and learning.