Reconceptualizing the L2 Writing Process: Human-GenAI-Mediated Feedback through Ecological Language Competencies

• In Event: Embodied, Multiscalar, and Mediated Translanguaging Across Spaces, Identities, and Technologies

Abstract

Generative AI has transformed L2 writing, producing human-like prose but often impersonal feedback. This study explores the potential of human-GenAI collaborative feedback, focusing on the first author’s experience as a teaching assistant in a Hong Kong tertiary teacher education program. Grounded in Paul Thibault’s Ecological Languaging Competencies, it employs qualitative narrative inquiry to examine how whole-body sense-making, individual languaging, and environmental affordances interact as learners exercise agency. Two multilingual students’ human-AI mediated L2 writing processes are analyzed through Zoom tutoring sessions, reflective portfolios, and AI-student conversation logs. Findings expound on how students’ multilevel ecosystems of capacities and skills are scaffolded and mediated in coordination with others through multimodal interactions, highlighting the imperative role of the human assistant in rapport building.

Authors

• Lu Xi, University of Georgia

• Qinghua Chen, The Education University of Hong Kong