Advanced Multilingual Writers’ Self-Directed Use of Generative AI in Academic Writing: Rethinking Writing, Authorship, and Learning

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 1:45 pm - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Approaches to Artificial Intelligence and Literacies

Abstract

This study explores the self-directed use of Generative AI (GenAI) in academic writing among advanced L2/multilingual English writers. Through case studies, we investigate how three (post)doctoral writers engage with GenAI to address specific L2 writing challenges. The findings revealed a spectrum of approaches to GenAI, ranging from prescriptive to dialogic uses, with participants positioning AI as a tool versus an interactive participant in their meaning-making process, reflecting different views of AI as a mechanical system, social construct, or distributed agency. We highlight the ways AI disrupts traditional notions of authorship, text, and learning, showing how a poststructuralist lens allows us to transcend human-AI, writing-technology, and learning-bypassing binaries in our existing discourses on AI.

Authors

• Chaoran Wang, Colby College

• Wei Xu, Northern Illinois University

• Xiao Tan, Utah State University