Investigating The Role Of Artificial Intelligence In English Writing Fluency Among Iraqi University Students

Abstract

In today's world, technology has dominated almost every dimension of professional lives. In the realm of education, a bulk of research has confirmed the contributions of employing Chatgbt in enhancing English language learning skills especially writing. In this vein, the present study adapted a mixed-methods analysis to delve into the effect of employing AI in writing fluency and to identify the challenges of employing Chatgbt. To obtain the quantitative research objective, the researcher collected 120 university students from different Iraq universities. The range of participants' age was between 19 to 23 and their language learning experience varied from 7 to 10 years. To measure the participants' writing fluency, a sample of IELTS writing task was selected. The participants were divided into control and experimental groups in which the participants in the control group received the traditional writing instruction while their counterparts in the experimental received the mediating role of Chatgbt in giving feedback and comments for their writing performance. The data were analyzed through independent samples t-test. The results documented that the participants in the experimental group surpassed the performance of control group. In the qualitative part, eight instructors were chosen for running semi-structure interviews. Through analyzing the data via thematic analysis, several themes such as lack of digital literacy, lack of interest, and facilities were detected. Moreover, the findings were discussed in light of pervious findings and several implications were provided for teachers and teacher educators.