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FROM THE EDITORS

by Christopher Alexander and Jarosław Krajka

University of Nicosia, Cyprus/ Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Poland

alexander.c @ unic.ac.cy & jarek.krajka @ gmail.com

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We are delighted to launch Volume 25, Issue 1 of Teaching English with Technology (TEwT) with news of a significant milestone in the journal’s development. According to the recently released 2024 Scopus metrics, TEwT has improved its ranking in the Language and Linguistics category by 13 positions, now standing at 61 out of 1,126 journals, with its percentile rising from 93 to 94. Even more notably, the journal is now officially ranked in Q1 for the Education category. As of June 2025, the journal begins the year with a CiteScoreTracker of 6.0, placing it in the 96th percentile—a clear indication of continued momentum. These achievements reaffirm TEwT’s growing impact and its standing as the leading journal in its AI-focused TESOL field.

As we look ahead, we must also acknowledge an important transition. Dr Ferit Kılıçkaya of Mehmet Akif Ersoy University in Turkey, who has served as Associate Editor and Statistics Editor for over 15 years, is stepping down from his editorial role. Dr Kılıçkaya has played a pivotal part in developing and maintaining the journal’s methodological standards. His expertise, dedication, and quiet influence have shaped countless manuscripts, guided authors, and helped ensure the statistical validity of our research articles. On behalf of the editorial board and our readership, we extend our sincerest thanks for his long-standing service and wish him every success in his future academic endeavours.

Looking forward to 2025 and beyond, TEwT will embark on a strategic restructuring of its reviewer board to reflect a sharpened editorial focus on artificial intelligence (AI) in English language teaching. This shift responds to the proliferation of AI tools across educational settings and the need for scholarly frameworks that evaluate, critique, and guide their pedagogical integration. TEwT will soon publish a detailed editorial statement outlining the types of AI-related submissions it seeks to prioritise. Topics of interest will include empirical studies of AI in classroom practice, prompt engineering, digital ethics, AI-supported assessment, and teacher development in technologically mediated contexts.

This issue brings together five original research articles that address current and emerging questions in technology-enhanced language teaching, with particular emphasis on AI, peer assessment, telecollaboration, and robotics.

The first article, authored by Anna Turula of the University of Wrocław (Poland), Maike Korinna Grau of Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg (Germany), and Dorothy Chun and John Cano of the University of California, Santa Barbara (USA), is titled “Social and cognitive affordances of chat technologies in telecollaboration: A critical look at the CoI model”. This paper examines a three-way telecollaborative exchange between university students in Germany, Poland, and the United States, analysing how cognitive and social presence are realised through synchronous video chats and asynchronous forum postings. Using the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework as a theoretical foundation, the authors explore how different modes of communication afford distinct forms of interaction and engagement. Their findings indicate that synchronous tools foster both cognitive and social presence equally, while asynchronous tools promote deeper critical thinking. However, the CoI model was found to be insufficient in fully accounting for certain interpersonal dynamics observed during live discourse. The authors propose refining CoI subcategories to better reflect the nature of social presence in synchronous environments.

In the second article, “Enhancing ChatGPT-based writing research through effective prompt use”, Neil Evan Jon Anthony Bowen of the English Department at Thammasat University (Thailand) and Richard Watson Todd of the School of Liberal Arts at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (Thailand) tackle the complex issue of prompt design in generative AI writing research. Through a case study focusing on the identification of logical fallacies in student essays, the authors compare multiple iterations of a carefully designed prompt across different conversation threads with a single-shot prompt followed by two structured follow-up queries. Their findings reveal that combining iterative prompting with focused follow-ups yields greater analytical depth, but they also caution against overuse, which may undermine validity. The authors propose a set of preliminary guidelines for researchers and teachers aiming to use AI effectively in written assessment, stressing the importance of tailoring prompts to specific research contexts.

Turning to the role of peer evaluation in AI-supported writing, the third article, “Exploring peer assessment in academic writing with ChatGPT: Insights from the Legitimation Code Theory in higher education”, is authored by Irina Argüelles-Álvarez from the Department of Linguistics Applied to Science and Technology at the Polytechnic University of Madrid (Spain). This study reports on a workshop involving 101 engineering undergraduates who used ChatGPT to draft professional cover emails. Students then engaged in comparative judgement

exercises to rank the quality of their peers’ submissions. Drawing on the Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), particularly its Specialisation dimension, the author analyses how students distinguish between technical accuracy and personal voice. The results suggest that students are capable of making informed, structured evaluations of AI-assisted writing and that peer assessment can be an effective way to build critical thinking skills while promoting academic integrity in AI-mediated learning contexts.

The fourth contribution, “Development and validation of an instrument to evaluate constructs for integrating AI into ELT”, comes from Wani Nurfahani Mohd Sapuan and Nur Ainil Sulaiman, both from the Faculty of Education at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. This study responds to the urgent need for validated frameworks to guide the integration of AI technologies in English Language Teaching (ELT). The authors identify eleven key constructs drawn from the AI-TPACK model and the Framework for Teaching, grouped into three domains: Technological Proficiency, Pedagogical Compatibility, and Social Awareness. Using the Content Validity Index (CVI) method and the insights of six expert reviewers, the instrument was refined to meet rigorous standards of reliability. Several items were removed or restructured to improve internal consistency, resulting in a final CVI score well above the acceptable threshold. This validated instrument provides a valuable resource for ESL educators and researchers looking to assess AI readiness and instructional compatibility in various teaching contexts.

Finally, in the fifth article, “Enhancing TESOL with AI and NAO robots”, Dana Di Pardo Léon-Henri, Françoise Greffier (ELLIADD UR 4661), Julien Henriet, Marie-Laure Betbeder, and Floran Carvalho (FEMTO-ST DISC Institute), all based at the University Marie and Louis Pasteur (France), explore the transformative potential of robotics and artificial intelligence in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Focusing on third-year university students studying English for Specific Purposes (ESP), the authors highlight how NAO humanoid robots and AI-powered tutoring systems offer a more personalised and engaging learning experience. These technologies are shown to boost motivation, improve feedback quality, and assist instructors in tracking learner progress. The study positions AI and robot-assisted language learning (RALL) not as replacements for teachers, but as collaborative, time-efficient tools capable of enhancing both instruction and learner outcomes—particularly in ESP and lifelong learning contexts.

Together, the articles in this issue reflect the rapidly evolving landscape of English language teaching in the AI age. From refining research frameworks to exploring new tools and classroom practices, these contributions embody TEwT’s commitment to innovation, rigour, and impactful pedagogy.

We thank our readers, authors, and reviewers for their continued support and look forward to another year of groundbreaking scholarship.