Enhancing the grammatical accuracy of EFL writing by using an AWE-assisted process approach

Several automated writing evaluation (AWE) applications have been developed to facilitate writing improvement. However, few studies have examined the use of an AWE-assisted process-writing approach to facilitate EFL grammatical development. This study examined 63 participants' grammatical performance in revised and subsequent new essays, learner perceptions and strategies, and possible factors mediating learning in an AWE-assisted process-writing program. Student essays and learner responses to a questionnaire regarding their perceptions on and experiences with using Criterion, an AWE tool, to improve the grammatical aspects of their writing were analyzed. In contrast to the improvement in grammatical performance observed in the revisions of each essay, improvement in the writing of new texts was not observed until the third essay. Furthermore, 18 individual interviews were conducted, and four learner types related to the exercise of learner agency were identified: goal getters, accuracy pursuers, reluctant learners, and late bloomers. Agency appeared to mediate AWE-assisted writing, and the repeated act of language gap noticing and metacognitive strategy use mediated by the process-writing approach appeared to facilitate language modification and longer-term shifts in the students' initial writing ability, although the effects appeared to occur earlier among the goal getters and accuracy pursuers than among the other learner types.