Prof. Kanglong Liu, Associate Professor in the Department of Language Science and Technology at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, published an article on Times Higher Education (THE) Campus on 28 September 2026, sharing his team’s approach to teaching argumentative writing with generative AI and corpus resources.
Entitled “A tool for teaching argumentative writing to EFL students”, the article explores how teachers can use generative AI and corpus resources to help learners build coherent arguments while retaining responsibility for their language choices. It responds to difficulties with academic expression, argument structure and evidence use among university students learning English as a foreign language.
Developed by Prof. Liu and his collaborators, the platform contains more than 900,000 words from expert opinion articles and argumentative essays. Students examine authentic patterns of language use and compare them with AI-generated suggestions before revising their own writing.
The six-week workshop involved 24 non-English-major undergraduates from different disciplines. Teachers guided students in analysing language patterns, evaluating alternative expressions and applying what they had learned to argumentative writing. According to the article, participants’ average essay scores increased by nearly four points on a 30-point scale, with the strongest gains in language use and grammatical accuracy. The first and final writing tasks were completed without tools, allowing the team to compare students’ independent writing before and after the workshop.
The teaching design also encouraged students to question AI-generated suggestions and check language use against corpus evidence. Prof. Liu presents this comparison as a way to develop critical awareness of language and rhetorical choices while reducing passive reliance on generative AI.
In the article, Prof. Liu emphasises the central role of teachers in designing activities that prompt students to search, compare and refine language. The work illustrates how corpus linguistics and language technology can inform writing instruction, offering a practical example of how educators can use AI to support active learning.
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Click HERE to read the full article on Times Higher Education (THE) Campus.
