Exploring the Editing Quality of ChatGPT and Grammarly in EFL Writing: A Comparative Study

The quest for improving writing quality, especially in EFL/ESL contexts, has recently led to students’ reliance on automated writing assistance tools (AWATs). This study aims to draw a comparison between two AWATs, ChatGPT and Grammarly, on improving the writing quality of 100 argumentative essays. Ten common writing errors were traced among the students’ compositions, including subject-verb agreement, misuse of articles, verb tense consistency, lack of proper punctuation, monotonous and repetitive writing, over-reliance on literal translation, verbless sentences, lack of cohesion and coherence, collocation errors, and long sentences. Findings demonstrated that both ChatGPT and Grammarly had remarkably improved the quality, readability, and accuracy of student compositions. Yet, ChatGPT was more efficient than Grammarly in addressing collocation patterns, organising long sentences, and enhancing overall coherence. The post-test scores revealed a dramatic improvement in writing quality, with scores rising from an average of 2.50 (SD = 0.092) for essays edited with ChatGPT (M = 4.56/5.00; SD = 0.49) compared to those edited with Grammarly (M = 2.86, SD = 0.76). These results confirm the findings of previous studies that AI-based writing assistance tools can be valuable resources for EFL learners in improving their writing quality. The study emphasises the importance of integrating these tools into writing courses to improve the quality and coherence of written texts, save time and effort, and provide valuable support to learners in their writing development.