Unraveling Primary School EFL Students’ Willingness to Communicate with Artificial Intelligence
Keywords:
Primary school students, Communicate with AIAbstract
Background: The pervasive application of artificial intelligence (AI) in educational contexts has inevitably prompted discussion regarding its influence on learning as well as users’ intention to adopt AI tools. Despite growing attention, empirical research that explores how AI is actually used in English learning remains limited. Even fewer studies have examined primary school students’ willingness to communicate with AI (AI-WTC).
Aims: This study aims to investigate Chinese primary school students’ willingness to communicate with AI in English learning and examine whether demographic variables such as grade and gender influence their AI-WTC using the AI-WTC scale.
Methods: This study selected 657 students from several primary schools in Jiangsu Province, China. Three volunteers in the survey sample participated in semi-structured interviews. The study employed SPSS 26.0 and Mplus 8.3 to analyze the data collected by questionnaire. We conducted a univariate normality test and performed confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). We adopted descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA and the independent-samples t-test to explore the levels and demographic variation of EFL students’ willingness to communicate.
Results: Results revealed that Chinese primary school students demonstrate a relatively high level of AI-WTC. Furthermore, neither gender nor grade showed significant effects on students’ AI-WTC. Possible reasons were provided from practical and theoretical perspectives.
Conclusion: This paper discusses the limitations of the study and directions for future research. This study fills a theoretical gap by examining AI-WTC in primary school students and offers practical implications for early AI integration in language education.
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