Impact of ChatGPT on English academic writing ability and engagement of Chinese EFL undergraduates

Although Chinese undergraduate students majoring in English as a foreign language (EFL) need to master English academic writing, they still have some challenges in learning English academic writing. ChatGPT has gradually been applied to academic writing, which play an important role in improving students’ academic writing. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the impact of ChatGPT as an AI tool on English academic writing ability and engagement of EFL undergraduate students in a private university in China. This study used quasi-experimental and survey questionnaire to study 70 third-year undergraduate students (experimental class=34, control class=36) majoring in English. The data were analyzed by independent sample t-test, paired sample t-test and descriptive analysis. The results revealed that ChatGPT can improve students’ English academic writing ability in content, structure and coherence, grammar, linguistic range, vocabulary, spelling, and form. Furthermore, most students (>60%) believed that ChatGPT has a positive impact on their engagement in English academic writing in terms of affective engagement, cognitive engagement, social engagement, and behavioral engagement. Implications and recommendations for EFL academic writing are proposed at the end of this article.

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