The rapid proliferation of ChatGPT has incited debates regarding its impact on human writing. Amid concerns about declining writing standards, this study investigates the role of ChatGPT in facilitating academic writing, especially among language learners. Using a case study approach, this study examines the experiences of Kailing, a doctoral student, who integrates ChatGPT throughout their academic writing process. The study employs activity theory as a lens for understanding writing with generative AI tools and data analyzed includes semi-structured interviews, writing samples, and GPT logs. Results indicate that Kailing effectively collaborates with ChatGPT across various writing stages while preserving her distinct authorial voice and agency. This underscores the potential of AI tools such as ChatGPT to enhance academic writing for language learners without overshadowing individual authenticity. This case study offers a critical exploration of how ChatGPT is utilized in the academic writing process and the preservation of a student's authentic voice when engaging with the tool.

AI generated content (AIGC) presents considerable challenge to educators around the world. Instructors need to be able to detect such text generated by large language models, either with the naked eye or with the help of some tools. There is also growing need to understand the lexical, syntactic and stylistic features of AIGC. To address these challenges in English language teaching, we first present ArguGPT, a balanced corpus of 4,038 argumentative essays generated by 7 GPT models in response to essay prompts from three sources: (1) in-class or homework exercises, (2) TOEFL and (3) GRE writing tasks. Machine-generated texts are paired with roughly equal number of human-written essays with three score levels matched in essay prompts. We then hire English instructors to distinguish machine essays from human ones. Results show that when first exposed to machine-generated essays, the instructors only have an accuracy of 61% in detecting them. But the number rises to 67% after one round of minimal self-training. Next, we perform linguistic analyses of these essays, which show that machines produce sentences with more complex syntactic structures while human essays tend to be lexically more complex. Finally, we test existing AIGC detectors and build our own detectors using SVMs and RoBERTa. Results suggest that a RoBERTa fine-tuned with the training set of ArguGPT achieves above 90% accuracy in both essay- and sentence-level classification. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive analysis of argumentative essays produced by generative large language models. Machine-authored essays in ArguGPT and our models will be made publicly available at https://github.com/huhailinguist/ArguGPT

In this paper, we present a solution for providing personalized and instant feedback to English learners through a mobile application, called Flowchase, that is connected to a speech technology able to segment and analyze speech segmental and supra-segmental features. The speech processing pipeline receives linguistic information corresponding to an utterance to analyze along with a speech sample. After validation of the speech sample, a joint forced-alignment and phonetic recognition is performed thanks to a combination of machine learning models based on speech representation learning that provides necessary information for designing a feedback on a series of segmental and supra-segmental pronunciation aspects.

Making use of a cloud service with massive data collected online, the robot Charpy can respond to learners in natural conversations based on their interests and English skill levels. "We hope that Charpy will help learners to overcome difficulties in conversations," said Mitsunori Fukuchi, president of CAI Media, based in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture. According to the company, Charpy's character is set as a little bird that likes chocolate. The robot is programmed with 1,000 conversation phrases. According to Fukuchi, the robot can handle all English skill levels from beginners to advanced levels using the cloud service.

More than three million students across California traded in pencils for computers to take their standardized tests last school year. You might have read about the statewide results of the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress: More than half of the state's public school students in grades 3 to 8 and 11th grade failed to meet benchmarks for college readiness. The test is new and considered harder than previous ones -- and scores did increase from 2015, the first year scores were reported. But they remained low -- and certain groups, such as black students, lagged behind. Some schools and districts performed very well.