Vol. 2 No. 3 (2026), Articles
Vol. 2 No. 3 (2026)

ENHANCING ACADEMIC WRITING SKILLS OF FIRST-YEAR EFL STUDENTS THROUGH CHATGPT-ASSISTED LEARNING

Articles
Published 2026-10-09
Davurova Gulkhayo Ibrohim qizi
UzSWLU, EFL teacher, Department of Applied Sciences №2
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Keywords

ChatGPT, Generative AI, Academic Writing, EFL Pedagogy, Zone of Proximal Development, Scaffolding Framework, Formative Feedback, Prompt Engineering, Higher Education, Educational Technology.

Abstract

This comprehensive study establishes a rigorous methodological framework for utilizing generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), specifically OpenAI's ChatGPT, to enhance the academic writing proficiency of first-year university students learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Moving away from traditional restrictive measures or unstructured AI utilization, this paper presents the 'AI-Scaffolded Academic Writing Framework (AI-SAWF). Rooted in Lev Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and social constructivism, the framework repositions ChatGPT as a dynamic, interactive pedagogical scaffold rather than a passive text generator. Employing a mixed-methods explanatory sequential design, the study analyzed 120 first-year undergraduate students over a full 16-week academic semester, divided equally into an Experimental Group (utilizing the AI-SAWF model) and a Control Group (relying on traditional peer and instructor review). Quantitative evaluations based on standardized IELTS Academic Writing rubrics showed statistically significant advancements for the experimental cohort across four critical dimensions: task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, and grammatical accuracy

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