Augmenting Rather Than Replacing: Effects of Generative AI Use Modes on Intrinsic Motivation and Writing Performance in College English Writing

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-766-8_10How to use a DOI?

Keywords

generative artificial intelligence; intrinsic motivation; college English writing; human–AI collaboration; knowledge transfer; writing performance

Abstract

The rapid expansion of generative artificial intelligence has created both new opportunities and new tensions in foreign language writing instruction. This study examined how three instructional modes—traditional instruction, substitution-oriented GenAI use, and augmentation-oriented GenAI use—were associated with college students’ intrinsic motivation and writing performance. A quasi-experimental design was employed with 120 first-year non-English majors. To strengthen internal validity, instructional time, writing topics, and teacher effects were controlled across groups. Results showed that the augmentation-oriented group significantly outperformed the other two groups in intrinsic motivation, writing performance, and short-term knowledge transfer. Notably, the substitution-oriented group scored significantly lower than the control group on the end-of-intervention transfer task, suggesting a possible short-term transfer disadvantage rather than evidence of long-term retention loss. ANCOVA further indicated that the advantage of the augmentation-oriented condition in intrinsic motivation remained significant after controlling for pretest intrinsic motivation and English proficiency. In addition, mediation analysis showed that intrinsic motivation partially mediated the relationship between augmentation-oriented GenAI use and writing performance. These findings suggest that GenAI functions most productively as a cognitive support tool when instructional design preserves learner authorship and active engagement, although the study did not directly observe students’ interaction processes with AI.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yousong Hu
AU  - Yi Ma
AU  - Hongmei Yu
AU  - Letong Gao
AU  - Yaxin Xiao
AU  - Yang Liu
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/04
TI  - Augmenting Rather Than Replacing: Effects of Generative AI Use Modes on Intrinsic Motivation and Writing Performance in College English Writing
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 6th International Conference on Education, Information Management and Service Science  (EIMSS 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 95
EP  - 108
SN  - 2589-4900
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-766-8_10
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-766-8_10
ID  - Hu2026
ER  -