BC TEAL 2026 Annual Conference

English as an additional language (EAL) students have increasingly been found to use AI-powered technologies in their learning process (Du & Yang, 2025). However, existing research has largely focused on the affordances and challenges of these tools, paying limited attention to how students’ English language proficiency shapes their engagement with AI-mediated writing. Based on a case study of six EAL graduate students at a Canadian university, this research addresses this need by posing the question: To what extent does English language proficiency enable EAL graduate students to critically engage with AI-generated writing suggestions and resist the standardized language ideologies embedded in these tools?
Data were collected through observations of AI use in writing, semi-structured interviews, and digital artifacts such as screenshots of writing processes and generated texts. Thematic analysis followed an inductive approach, complemented by multimodal analysis in which artifacts were annotated and linked to emergent themes.
Positioned within critical language awareness (Fairclough, 1992; Motha, 2014), findings reveal that participants’ levels of English proficiency significantly shaped engagement with AI technologies. As these graduate students have advanced English language proficiency, they strategically used AI as a reference for their writing process, questioning suggestions, refining prompts, challenging standard language ideologies, and selectively incorporating revisions to preserve their authorial voice. The study also found that AI tools promoted standardized academic conventions, influencing lexical choices and syntactic complexity. Students with stronger linguistic confidence were more likely to resist homogenizing effects and maintain ownership of their texts. 
The presentation concludes by arguing that English language proficiency should be understood as a foundation for critical language awareness in AI-mediated contexts. EAL classrooms should position English language proficiency not merely as accuracy or fluency, but as a resource for critical engagement with AI, equipping learners to recognize, negotiate and resist the standardized language ideologies these tools promote.