Bridging AI literacy and self-perceived critical writing performance: The mediating role of collaborative interaction among EFL students
Abstract
The rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into academic writing has influenced EFL learning practices; however, empirical understanding of how students’ AI literacy translates into meaningful collaboration and critical writing development remains limited and inconclusive. This study aims to explore the structural relationships among students’ AI literacy, collaborative interaction quality, and self-perceived critical writing performance within an AI-supported EFL writing context. Adopting a quantitative survey design, data were collected from 282 EFL students enrolled in public universities in the Surakarta municipality using purposive sampling. A five-point Likert-scale questionnaire was employed to measure AI literacy, collaborative interaction quality, and perceived critical writing performance. Data were analyzed using structural modeling approach (SEM-PLS), including reliability and validity assessment, bootstrapped mediation analysis, and correlational-based path analysis. This study reveals that while AI literacy has a significant direct impact on self-perceived critical writing performance, it does not automatically foster collaborative interaction among EFL learners. However, collaborative interaction emerged as a predictor of students’ self-perceived critical writing performance and a critical mediator that significantly supports the effect of AI literacy on performance outcomes. These findings suggest that the benefits of technological proficiency are best realized when channeled through social-collaborative frameworks, suggesting the need for pedagogies that integrate individual AI competence with peer-based critical engagement. This study advances an exploratory model on the conditional role of collaboration in AI-supported writing. Pedagogically, it calls out the need for instructional scaffolding to complement AI literacy development in EFL writing classrooms.
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