We explore how language development, and training informed by development, impact L2 students’ navigation of ethical collaboration with machine translation (MT). Our interdisciplinary approach integrated the Writing Studies’ concept of ‘ethical collaboration’ – an ethically guided interface between students and GenAI – with Applied Linguistics, which highlights the need to address GenAI/MT ethics and L2 language. We created a model synthesizing the “Student Guide to AI Literacy” (MLA, 2024) with a theory of L2 development. Data were collected by 1) an established protocol – direct writing in English, self-translation from the L1 and machine translation from the L1, 2) developmentally focused and acknowledgement training, and 3) post-editing of self-translation. An emergence (onset) criterion and frequencies measured written development and evaluation of MT output, frequencies measured monitoring after training and a statistical analysis measured impact of the training types. The analysis of development and evaluation demonstrated that development impacted un/ethical evaluation of MT output. The post-edits indicated that developmentally focused training encouraged ethical monitoring when development permitted and had more impact than acknowledgement training. We conclude that guidelines and training on ethical collaboration with GenAI should be informed by L2 development, not only GenAI literacy, and that research on this topic should continue.

The Hub represents a departure from the way writing is usually conceived of and taught in Australia, in that it emphasizes writing as a discipline with a classical rhetorical framework. … Through preliminary longitudinal data from our Sydney Study of Writing as well as student interviews and program feedback, we demonstrate how and why a rhetorical approach best supports the development of student writing in multimodal contexts.

To establish the issues that must be considered by evaluators of college writing programs, Witte and Faigley review major evaluation studies conducted at the University of Northern Iowa, the University of California San Diego, Miami University, and the University of Texas.For each study the authors devise a series of questions that probe every aspect of theory, pedagogy, and research: What do we presently know? What assumptions are we making and how do those assumptions limit our knowledge? Are those limitations necessary or desirable? What do we still need to know?Such questions demand much of program evaluators, who also must face additional difficult questions as they evaluate a writing program. Do the instructors conducting the writing classes share common assumptions that are reflected in their assignments, evaluative procedures, teaching procedures, and course content? How stable will the program prove to be over time? Will the writing program have a lasting effect? Do students leave the program with increased confidence in their ability to write?As Witte and Faigley urge program evaluators to pose these questions, they also bring to the problem a new comprehensive conceptual framework that both necessitates such queries and provides an opportunity to answer them.