REFINING WRITING: GRAMMARLY AS AN AUTOMATED CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK TOOL FOR PAKISTANI TERTIARY-LEVEL ESL LEARNERS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62533/vxbw5a39Keywords:
ESL writing, corrective feedback, Pakistani learners, AI-assisted learningAbstract
The increasing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in education has opened new avenues for assisting English as a Second Language (ESL) students, particularly in situations where learners need regular feedback but the teacher has a large class size, a short time, and a heavy workload in terms of assessment. Students increasingly rely on computer-based writing assistance tools, such as Grammarly, to detect grammar, punctuation, spelling and stylistic errors while writing. But the benefit and effectiveness of such tools in Pakistan's higher education ESL classrooms needs empirical support. This pilot mixed-method research explores the use of Grammarly in the writing accuracy of Pakistani tertiary-level ESL learners, as well as students' feedback about its advantages and drawbacks. A total of 30 students were involved in the study, and were assigned to experimental and control groups -15 students each. Both groups participated in a six-week intervention, during which the experimental group used Grammarly to complete six writing tasks, while the control group completed similar writing tasks without Grammarly feedback. We compared errors in pre- and post-test writing samples for grammar, punctuation and spelling. The experimental group was also interviewed in semi-structured interviews to investigate their use of Grammarly. Descriptive results indicated that the experimental group made fewer total errors reduced from 25 to 12 for a 52.0% decrease, whereas the control group made only a slight decrease from 23 to 22 errors 4.3%. The most significant decreases in the experimental group were in punctuation and grammar errors. The qualitative results indicated that learners appreciated that Grammarly was easy to use, provided instant feedback and drew attention to common errors. But learners also indicated that Grammarly suggestions were too simplistic for advanced sentences, academic writing, coherence and argumentation. The study suggests that Grammarly can be employed as an additional feedback tool for improving surface-level writing accuracy for Pakistani ESL learners, but not as a substitute to teacher feedback. A blended approach to feedback - using automated, teacher, peer and reflective feedback - is suggested.
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