Forming Partnership: GenAI tools and EFL Doctorate Students

Abstract

<p>The higher education sector has witnessed a profound change after the whirlwind launch of ChatGPT in 2022. Words ranging from ‘disrupt’, ‘transform’ to ‘revolutionize’ have been used to describe the impact of tools powered by Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) such as ChatGPT. This has led to robust scholarship on the opportunities and challenges presented by GenAI tools for higher education. However, little research has fully explored the views of postgraduates who need to manage more complex writing tasks, such as writing journal articles, grant proposals and theses. To bridge this gap, this study aims to investigate the GenAI use by EFL PhD students in the disciplines of science and engineering. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected for the current study. The participants were PhD students taking a course on thesis writing in a university in Hong Kong. The results of the present study revealed that most students were able to effectively leverage GenAI tools such as ChatGPT as a writing assistant. This writing assistant and the students formed a partnership in academic writing. These findings have significant pedagogical implications, for example, the need for assessment re-designing in the GenAI era to prevent plagiarism and to promote higher-level thinking.</p>