REGISTER JOURNAL
Vol. 19 No. 2 (2026): REGISTER JOURNAL

Developing Students’ Academic Writing Skills: Feedback and Revising through an Intelligent Tutoring System at Siirt University

Cuneyt Demir (Department of English Language Teaching, Faculty of Education, University of Siirt, Turkey)



Article Info

Publish Date
02 Jul 2026

Abstract

This research investigated two types of feedback, AI-based and traditional teacher feedback, to improve students' academic writing skills in higher education. The research was conducted in the Department of English Language Teaching at a university in Türkiye employs comparative analyses, utilizing a pre-test and post-test design to assess improvements in students' surface-level writing skills. Sixty students, divided into two groups, received either AI-based feedback from tools like ChatGPT, Sudowrite, and Grammarly, or traditional teacher feedback on twelve essays. The study also includes a semi-structured questionnaire to gather qualitative data on students' perceptions of AI-based tools. Two tests, the Mann-Whitney U test and the Wilcoxon Signed Rank test, were utilized for the statistical analyses. The findings yielded a statistically significant difference between the AI-based feedback and teacher feedback, which empowered the potential of AI to improve students’ writing skills. The study found statistically significant differences in terms of AI-based tools and traditional teacher feedback applications. Furthermore, it was found that surface-level writing skills such as grammar, punctuation, and spelling can be greatly improved by AI-based feedback; distinctive features of AI tools are delivering concurrent personalized feedback, which is crucial to sustain the improvement. This study also includes some implications for using AI-based tools in school settings to help students develop in academic writing.

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