Open Access

Jennifer Preschern, Ilse Born-Lechleitner

• This article presents two action-research projects. In the first part, 81 English as a Foreign Language university students were tasked with comparing teacher feedback with feedback from ChatGPT. Grounded theory analysis revealed a general preference for teacher feedback, but students acknowledged benefits of ChatGPT, including convenience, judgment-free feedback, versatility, and its role as a learning companion. Students also highlighted negatives such as problems with reliability, lack of human interaction, absence of personalized feedback, poor speaking component, and difficulties handling slang and cultural nuances. In the second project, 19 students trialed and rated four teacher-directed activities using ChatGPT, subsequently detailing independent use. Positive learning outcomes emerged for vocabulary, while students had varied opinions on using ChatGPT to improve grammar and paragraph organization skills. When students were prompted to describe an independent learning task using ChatGPT, they mainly described activities resembling teacher-directed class activities.