This quasi-experimental study examines whether a teacher-scripted, non-text-generating AI Socratic Dialogue Assistant can enhance EFL undergraduates’ argumentative writing while supporting learner autonomy and academic integrity. The intervention was designed as multi-turn, question-only guidance that prompted reasoning without producing text, positioning AI as a dialogic catalyst rather than a writing generator. Drawing on the Technology Acceptance Model and writing self-efficacy theory, the study investigates how learners’ perceptions shape their engagement with AI-mediated questioning, extending these frameworks to a non-generative AI writing context. At a comprehensive university in Taiwan, 103 first-year students were assigned to an AI-supported revision condition (two classes, n = 65) or a conventional peer-and-teacher feedback condition (one class, n = 38) during an eight-week unit. Data consisted of pre/post argumentative essays coded for claims, grounds/evidence, and rebuttals, an 18-item TAM/Writing Self-Efficacy questionnaire, and written plus oral reflections. Controlling for pretest scores and accounting for class-level grouping, the AI group outperformed the control group in grounds/evidence and rebuttals. These gains reflected improvements in how students supplied evidence and responded to counterarguments, while no differences appeared in basic stance formulation. Students reported high perceived usefulness, mixed ease of use, and moderate-to-high writing self-efficacy, together with shifts toward metacognitive planning and argument structure awareness, minor navigation issues, and occasional reliance on prompts. The findings indicate that dialogic, question-only AI can offer more transparent and less text-replacing forms of support for writing instruction, and they highlight the importance of combining Socratic prompting with explicit instruction and scaffold-fading strategies to promote autonomy

Authors:
Li-Jen Wang, National Central University, Taiwan

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Li-Jen Wang is currently a full-time assistant professor of the Langauge center at National Central University, Taiwan.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Tuesday Schedule

Bookmark