GENERATIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION: FROM WRITING SUPPORT TO CRITICAL LITERACY

Abstract

The blistering adoption of large-language-model applications in the tertiary writing classroom has predetermined a clash of the efficiency-focused writing support with the larger educational project of developing critical literacy. This paper examines the role of undergraduate first semester Functional English courses in creating a tension with which undergraduate students negotiate when co-writing essays using ChatGPT. We have gathered 42 logs of student-AI interaction, 21 student reflective journals, and 14 student focus-group transcripts of Khushal Khan Khattak University Karak and Qurtuba University of Science and Information Technology Peshawar in the 2024-2025 academic year using the sociocultural and critical digital-literacy theories. Thematic discourse analysis enabled us to determine three predominant positions Instrumental, Reflexive, and Resistant positions, which were associated with different prompt design, source verification, and commentary patterns. These results indicate that, under the conditions of scaffolding by critical-framing tasks, generative AI may be used as a dialogic partner helping to make rhetorical choice more visible than invisible. The research has an impact on teaching English language by providing the empirically based typology of student-AI positioning as well as suggesting an integrative pedagogic model in the context of which writing support and critical literacy development concurrently follow.