Voice and Ownership in AI-Assisted L2 Writing
TL;DR
Pedagogy and assessment should focus less on whether AI is present than on whether learners understand, transform, and authorise its contribution, according to whether learners understand, transform, and authorise its contribution.
Abstract
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has unsettled a long-standing premise of second language (L2) writing research: that the language through which a writer’s voice is realised originates with the learner. Voice (what a text conveys about its writer) and psychological ownership (whether writers feel the text is theirs) capture different aspects of a writer’s relationship to a text, yet have been theorised separately and rarely examined together. Using a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design, this study operationalised voice and ownership together in one sample of Saudi EFL undergraduates, most in their first year and new to AI, a population rarely examined in identity-focused research on AI-assisted writing. A questionnaire was completed by 178 students; 17 were interviewed using maximum variation sampling. Data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics and reflexive thematic analysis. AI use was assistance-oriented rather than generative, supportive use exceeding full-text generation ( d = 0.86). Perceived voice was near the midpoint while ownership fell significantly below it; the two were strongly related ( r = .608) yet not redundant. Supportive use was the strongest predictor of both perceptions, whereas generative use predicted ownership but not voice, and proficiency made a small, tentative contribution to voice only. Interviews showed ownership to be a graded judgement turning on transformation and accountability, and voice to rest on recognisability and level-match; full-text generation occupied the authorship boundary. These findings suggest pedagogy and assessment should focus less on whether AI is present than on whether learners understand, transform, and authorise its contribution.