ChatGPT and its Impact on Students' Cognitive Abilities and Language Development in the Swedish EFL Classroom : A qualitative study of English 5 students in upper secondary education

Sammanfattning

The purpose of this study is to explore the possibilities that the highly popular ChatGPT utility might have on education, and more specifically, how it could impact language development in the Swedish EFL classroom. This will be attained through a qualitative method and through multiple observations in real-life situations with students from upper secondary school. Additionally, for a more profound analysis this will then be combined with follow-up interviews with two educating teachers. The observations presented mixed results with some students displaying positive feelings towards ChatGPT while others reacted negatively to its extensive replies to simple inquiries. This proved to be valuable empirical data for this study's analysis. Therefore, this study has concluded that ChatGPT as a didactic tool, should be used in a controlled situation, and explained thoroughly with a specific intentional purpose. In other words, ChatGPT could be used in different teaching situations to enforce students' abilities or to ease the cognitive burden that many students experience when writing texts, as can be explained by cognitive load theory (Sweller, 1988, p. 277). If the messages from the text-generator are clear, informative, personal, and concise it could be used to aid students in their writing process. However, the different complications that arise with the use of ChatGPT including a negative effect on student self-esteem must be considered.