Generative AI in the Limelight: The Strategic Use of ChatGPT Among EFL Students to Cope with Language Issues

The introduction of generative AI, such as ChatGPT for text, is believed to be a game-
changer in education with potential impacts on a paradigm shift in ELT. While many studies
have focused on the pedagogical implications of ChatGPT in the higher education context,
discussion of the issue of how students use ChatGPT to deal with language problems remains
limited. This study, therefore, investigated how students employed strategies to decide what
prompts to use and to create the prompts for ChatGPT to solve language issues. Data were
obtained from an online survey distributed to first-year students in an English course. The
responses from the survey were then analyzed according to the research questions. First,
through a corpus-based approach, a keyword analysis revealed that grammar problems were
the most prominent issues that encouraged the use of ChatGPT among the students. Second, a
thematic analysis of the students’ responses yielded two major themes of how they developed
effective prompts, including providing relevant context and using a keyword-based approach.
Overall, this study not only contributed valuable insights into how the students used ChatGPT
but also suggested that teachers guide students in using ChatGPT judiciously, rather than
prohibiting its use.