Exploring the Effectiveness of Cooperative Pre-Service Teacher and Generative AI Writing Feedback on Chinese Writing

Due to their efficiency, stability, and enhanced language comprehension and analysis capabilities, generative AIs have attracted increasing attention in the field of writing as higher-level automated writing evaluation (AWE) feedback tools. However, few studies have examined the impact of pre-service teachers using generative AI in combination with their own teaching experience to provide feedback on Chinese writing. To fill this gap, based on 1035 writing feedback texts, we examined the differences in writing feedback between 11 pre-service teachers and Erine Bot (a generative AI) and interviewed the pre-service teachers about their willingness to cooperate with generative AI. The collaborative writing feedback generated by the pre-service teachers using AI was compared with the feedback generated by the pre-service teachers and generative AI separately. We identified that, although Ernie Bot provided significantly better feedback than the pre-service teachers in three specific areas (except for language expression), and both Ernie Bot and the pre-service teachers had respective advantages in terms of writing strategy, human-computer cooperative writing feedback was significantly better than the writing feedback provided by either Ernie Bot or the pre-service teachers alone. The was true across all aspects of the feedback in terms of focus and strategy. These findings can support the training of pre-service teachers and improve the writing quality of their students via implementing AI to provide more effective writing feedback.