EXAMINING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF AI-ASSISTED METACOGNITIVE INTERVENTIONS IN IMPROVING ACADEMIC LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

With a fast growing development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, new opportunities are born in terms of improving higher education teaching and learning. This paper has discussed the effectiveness of ChatGPT and Grammarly, which are AI-assisted metacognitive interventions, in enhancing the level of academic language proficiency in college students. The research design used is quantitative quasi-experimental research design based on pretest-posttest control group design. Sixty undergraduate students in one of the Pakistani public sector universities took part in the research where 30 of the students formed an experimental group, and 30 students formed a control group. In the experimental group, ChatGPT and Grammarly were used to provide metacognition assistance of the importance of AI in writing tasks, whereas the control group was provided with the standard approach to teaching writing. Academic writing test made up of a pretest and posttest was used as a source of data collection and a questionnaire was used to measure metacognitive engagement. Independent and paired samples t-tests showed that the experimental group showed significant improvement in academic language proficiency than the control one. Besides, the research findings showed that during the use of AI tools, the students were actively involved in metacognitive strategies related to planning, monitoring, revising, and evaluating their writing. It is concluded that the combination of AI-assisted tools with metacognitive learning strategies can prove to be effective at improving academic language proficiency in students. The results are sound implications to the teachers who want to use artificial intelligence technologies to teach academic writing in colleges and universities.