ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF LITERACY: TRILINGUAL STUDENTS’ PERSPECTIVES ON AI-SUPPORTED WRITING DEVELOPMENT

Izabela Olszak

Abstract


The rapid integration of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) into educational systems has initiated a paradigm shift in how literacy, particularly writing, is acquired, practiced, and taught. While research increasingly recognizes the utility of AI in enhancing discrete literacy skills through adaptive feedback, multimodal engagement, and personalized learning trajectories (Lund & Wang, 2023; Liebrenz et al., 2023), there remains a critical gap in understanding how trilingual learners navigate and conceptualize these AI-mediated processes. Existing studies have largely focused on monolingual or bilingual contexts, leaving the unique cognitive, linguistic, and metalinguistic experiences of trilingual students underrepresented in the discourse. This study investigates how trilingual students training to become English language teachers perceive the role of AI in shaping their literacy development, particularly in writing across multiple languages. It explores three interrelated research questions: (1) How do trilingual students engage with AI tools to support and enhance their writing competencies in English? (2) What are their beliefs about the cognitive and pedagogical implications of AI for literacy practices? (3) What challenges and ethical considerations do they associate with the growing reliance on AI in literacy learning? Using a quantitative approach, the study draws on survey data with 80 Polish applied linguistics students proficient in three languages (English-German or English-Spanish combinations). Findings reveal a nuanced understanding of AI’s affordances: participants reported increased autonomy in drafting, revising, and critically analyzing texts; greater access to genre-specific models and multilingual resources; and enhanced metacognitive awareness when reading complex materials. However, concerns emerged regarding overreliance on AI-generated content, diminished critical thinking, and the erosion of traditional literacy instrucgenerative AI, trilingual literacy, writing processes, multilingual education, digital literacies, AI-assisted learning generative AI, trilingual literacy, writing processes, multilingual education, digital literacies, AI-assisted learningtion, especially when AI is used without pedagogical scaffolding. By centering trilingual learners, this research addresses a significant blind spot in the current literature on AI in education. It demonstrates that multilingual literacy development in the AI age demands not only technological fluency but also a reconfiguration of pedagogical strategies that align with cognitive flexibility and linguistic diversity. The study calls for literacy frameworks that are both AI-aware and responsive to the needs of learners operating across multiple linguistic systems.

 

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generative AI, trilingual literacy, writing processes, multilingual education, digital literacies, AI-assisted learning

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejals.v8i4.664

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