Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) in Higher Education: Indonesian EFL Students’ Perceptions about Grammarly Use across Student Cohorts

Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) has been considered a potential pedagogical technique that exploits technology to assist the students’ writing. However, little attention has been devoted to examining students’ perceptions of Grammarly use in higher education context. This paper aims to obtain information regarding the writing process and the merits and drawbacks of Grammarly use among Indonesian undergraduate EFL students. A hundred (n=100) students majoring in English education from a public university in Banten Province were involved in this research. They were divided into three groups of users, i.e., first-, second-, and third-year student cohorts, to test whether the frequency of using Grammarly can affect their perceptions of Grammarly use in a writing class. A questionnaire and an interview guide were used to obtain the data. While the questionnaire results were analyzed using SPSS version 20, the interview results were coded and categorized based on common themes. The findings showed that there is no difference among student cohorts in their perceiving that the use of Grammarly was considered necessary to compose and revise their writing because they still dealt with several writing constraints. They thought they got immediate and comprehensive feedback, notifications of errors, and suggestions to revise the errors. Furthermore, the frequency of using Grammarly, as viewed from the student cohorts, may affect their perceptions of usefulness and drawbacks of Grammarly use, especially whether Grammarly’s feedback is always helpful or not. Examining the opportunities of using Grammarly in sparking a constructive learning atmosphere in EFL writing class is worth-researching further.

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