Writing an article for publication requires students to deal with both writing and research decisions. The study followed 35 Indonesian EFL undergraduates during 16 meetings of a Research Method in ELT course and examined how their reflective attention and writer positioning changed. After every meeting, the students wrote a reflective journal, resulting in 560 entries and 3,920 responses to the recurring prompts. The analysis generated six interrelated themes and showed changes across three project phases. Early reflections focused mainly on research purpose, topic feasibility, models and writing criteria. During article development, students gave more attention to literature synthesis, methodological alignment, data work, and relationships among article sections. In the final phase, some students showed greater attention to manuscript integration, revision, evaluative judgment, and future academic writing. However, workload, anxiety, methodological difficulties, and the need for guidance remained. Reflective authorial positioning became more visible, but guided participation also increased. These findings suggest that reflective authorship developed through responsible interdependence, as students took greater responsibility for writing decisions while continuing to use academic, social, and technological support.
This study investigates EFL teachers' attitudes toward the use of gamification and art therapy-inspired approaches in language teaching. The study used a qualitative approach, with asynchronous semi-structured interviews conducted online with 26 EFL teachers at the International University of Tourism and Hospitality in Turkistan, Kazakhstan. The data were analysed thematically using the MAXQDA program. The findings show that teachers believe gamification and art therapy-inspired practices are effective ways to increase student motivation, communicative inventiveness, and emotional involvement. Gamification was defined as the use of game elements such as challenges, points, and collaborative tasks to enhance classroom involvement, but art therapy-inspired activities were seen as encouraging creative expression and lowering language anxiety. Teachers also noted that these techniques create student-centered learning settings and realistic communication practices applicable to professional contexts. Participants did, however, identify a number of problems, including insufficient professional training, time limits, and inflexible curriculum structures. The study suggests that combining gamification and creative pedagogies can help to create more engaging and emotionally supportive language learning environments, particularly in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) settings. It also emphasises the need for eacher training and institutional support in the successful adoption of innovative pedagogical approaches.
This study explores the AI-based flipped model to enhance academic writing proficiency and critical thinking among EFL learners. Employing a mixed method through a one-group pretest-posttest design, the study combined quantitative assessment using the IELTS Academic Writing Task 2 rubric and Facione's Critical Thinking framework with qualitative data drawn from open-ended post-intervention questionnaires. Descriptive statistics showed that the students' writing skills advanced from a pre-test mean of 4.75 to a post-test mean of 6.17, which stand for an average increase of 1.42 points (29.8%). Meanwhile, critical thinking scores increased from a mean of 42.87 to 68.14 with an average increase of 25.27 points (58.9%). The Wilcoxon signed-rank test further confirmed substantial rises for both outcomes (writing: Z = -5.163, p < .001; critical thinking: Z= -5.107), with the effect sizes (writing: r = .873, rrb = 1.000; critical thinking: r = .851, rrb = .976). Qualitative findings corroborated this trend, denoting significant improvements in writing organization, argument construction, evidence-based argumentation, and source evaluation. However, challenges such as over-reliance on AI output and difficulties related to adapting to self-paced learning were also observed. Implications for pedagogical design were highlighted, implying that AI-integrated flipped learning supported the teaching of writing and critical thinking skills.
A major challenge of learning Mandarin Chinese is mastering lexical tones. Conventional methods of teaching Mandarin tones assume that, for speakers of non-tonal languages, lexical tones are a ‘strange’ concept. Our small-scale pilot study drew on pedagogical theories of cross-linguistic transfer (CLT) to frame lexical tones as ‘familiar’ by modelling Mandarin pitch contours on English intonation patterns. We compared an experimental group with a control group, within a first-semester university Chinese language course. All participants completed a pre-test and a post-test (perception and production of tones), and a pre-survey and post-survey (attitudes towards learning). After 30-40 minutes of additional training, students in the experimental group demonstrated no significant improvement in perception or production of Mandarin tones vis-à-vis the control group but differentiated themselves in some interesting attitudinal ways. The results of the study suggest that it would be worth conducting further research into the new pedagogical approach on a larger scale.
Integrated reading-to-write (RTW) tasks in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) ask students to work carefully with sources. Writers must keep the original meaning, connect claims to evidence, and manage stance and voice when using several texts. Generative AI can make revision easier, but it may also produce wording that sounds convincing without enough evidence. This qualitative longitudinal multiple-case study examined how EFL university writers used conscious-access routines during AI-assisted revision and whether these routines later appeared in no-AI writing. Twenty-four third- and fourth-year English majors in a 16-week EAP course completed four RTW cycles. Each cycle included no-AI drafting and a 60-minute Gemini-supported revision session. Two revision conditions kept tool access and time-on-task the same. The checkpointed condition required uptake decisions, short reasons, and confidence ratings. The non-checkpointed condition allowed students to evaluate suggestions as they wished. Six data sources produced 384 coded revision episodes. The findings also showed clear differences between the two conditions. Evidence-first routines increased across cycles, while fluency-first routines decreased. No-AI milestone writing showed more evidence-first instances in the checkpointed condition at Weeks 8 and 12. Structured checkpointing may therefore help students use AI more responsibly by checking sources and evidence before accepting fluent suggestions.
