The Use of ChatGPT Chatbot in Enhancing Writing Skills of ESL Students

Abstract

On the way of digitizing society, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has started to have profound impacts on all aspects of the modern life. In this regard, the main purpose of this study was to explore the effects of generative AI technology use on the students’ writing performance in language education context. Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT) chatbot developed by OpenAI was the AI-powered application utilized by 14 participants during their writing process. One-group pretest-posttest quasi-experimental research design was adopted as a study design. Based on the obtained data, it can be concluded that the use of ChatGPT chatbot with the purpose of developing writing skills have positive and significant effects on the aspects of grammatical accuracy, lexical sophistication, and syntactic complexity. It has been also noted that with its non-defensive learning opportunities, chatbot-assisted language learning has positive impact on the participants’ writing achievement, motivation, and self-directed learning.