Original title: Extending the affective process and strategic engagement framework to address writer’s block in Ethiopian English as a foreign language contexts through critical artificial intelligence literacy and ethical generative artificial intelligence in low-resource settings
Eshetie Kasie · October 2026
Ten university students in Ethiopia used ChatGPT over an academic semester to tackle writer's block. At first, they trusted the tool without questioning it. Over time, they learned to reject suggestions that did not match their ideas or that pushed Western cultural biases. They designed their own prompts and kept their original voice in their drafts. Even with spotty internet holding them back, using the tool deliberately helped lower their writing anxiety.
Someone teaching you how to cook might step in and take over your family recipe, dumping in ingredients from their own hometown instead of yours. At first, you might let them do it because you are nervous about burning the meal, but soon the dish loses its original flavor. Here, students facing creative hurdles initially let an automated assistant dictate their sentences, only to realize the text sounded foreign to their lived experiences. They had to take back the spoon, filtering out suggestions that did not belong so their own taste remained clear.
Learning to write in a foreign language is intimidating, and chatbots often reflect cultural viewpoints that do not match the writer's own life. For students in places with shaky internet, knowing how to critique automated text helps them protect their own voice instead of letting an algorithm take over. It shows that technology can ease anxiety without erasing a writer's identity.
The study tracked a small sample of ten undergraduate students at a single university in Ethiopia over one semester. Furthermore, persistent structural barriers, specifically unreliable internet access, constrained the depth of the students' engagement with the generative tool.
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Extending the affective process and strategic engagement framework to address writer’s block in Ethiopian English as a foreign language contexts through critical artificial intelligence literacy and ethical generative artificial intelligence in low-resource settings — Eshetie Kasie — Discover Education — doi:10.1007/s44217-026-02049-w
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.