Teaching Writing and Critically Embracing Gen AI
GenAI literacy is not within the realm of my existing “routine expertise” (Lee, 2025). Albeit lacking knowledge about and skill for using Gen AI (ChatGPT in my situation), I was skeptical about its capability to perform, as one of my graduate advisees put it, “any task” pertaining to feedback provision when she politely inquired if I could incorporate ChatGPT into my writing class for freshmen English majors to collect data for her research project. Partly feeling obligated as a thesis adviser, whose advisee could not find an L2 writing instructor to participate in her study and partly feeling obligated to expand my “routine expertise,” I consented to her request by including ChatGPT as an additional source of feedback in addition to peer and teacher feedback to enhance my students’ feedback literacy. However, doubting its capability to perform higher order tasks, I relegated ChatGPT to performing tasks similar to Automatic Writing Evaluation (AWE). Students received language feedback from ChatGPT before discussing their 1st draft with peers. Then they could focus on commenting and discussing high-order issues when performing peer review. To alleviate my skepticism about ChatGPT’s language feedback and to encourage students to reflect on it, I also designed worksheets requesting them to check ChatGPT’s feedback against other credible online dictionaries (e.g., Collins) before adopting it in their first draft and explain why. In a sense, I was exercising the first layer of critical AI literacy outlined by Bali (2023, as cited in Ou, et al., 2024, p. 3)—“skepticism and questioning --and also trying to cultivate it in my students.
The Role of Gen Ai in Writing Education: How to Use AI in Writing Education
At this year’s Therefore, in this symposium, scholars have demonstrated the roles that Gen AI can play in writing education. One message that greatly impressed me and aptly concluded SSLW2025 was that now it is meaningless to discuss whether AI should be used or not, as the trend is unstoppable; rather, we should discuss how to use AI and guide students to use it ethically and responsibly. While the list will never be exhaustive, there are some roles that Gen AI can fulfill well:
1. Gen AI can be a feedback provider, providing instant and individualized feedback on writing when students revise and edit their final drafts.
2. Gen AI can be a writing trainer, offering a wide range of writing suggestions, from hints to detailed comments.
3. Gen AI can be a material developer, helping teachers design writing activities based on AI-generated texts.
4. Gen AI can serve as an assessor, assisting teachers in grading essays with prescribed benchmarks.
Voice in writing for publication
At the 2025 Symposium on Second Language Writing in Taipei, Professor Icy Lee raised concerns that teachers should encourage students to retain their authorial voice when using AI tools. In his closing remarks, Professor Mizumoto echoed Lee, emphasizing the significance of L2 voice. It seems that as academic writing becomes increasingly saturated with AI-generated expression, the unique human L2 voice appears to be considered as valuable.
Why SSLW is Important to Me
SSLW is important to me because it is one of the few academic spaces where my two professional identities—a writing teacher and a researcher in digital multimodal composing (DMC) and academic writing—can meaningfully intersect. Each year, the conference reminds me why I care so deeply about supporting L2 writers, especially in a moment when technologies like generative AI are reshaping how students compose, revise, and claim ownership of their ideas.
DOI:10.30404/FLS.202512_(42).0007