Effect of Guidance-Based ChatGPT Learning Aid (GCLA) on College Students' Reading Comprehension: An Experimental Study

The rapid advancement of technology demands that educators continually innovate in their teaching methods. ChatGPT, a cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technology, holds immense potential for English pedagogy. This study aims to investigate the impact of the Guidance-based ChatGPT Learning Aid (GCLA) on students' reading comprehension. This pre-experimental study employed a one-group pretest-posttest design, involving twenty-one students from the Primary School Teacher Education Study Program. The students participated in a pretest, received treatments in four weeks, and then took a posttest. The main data collection instrument was tests, and the resulting data were analyzed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test due to the fact that the data from the pretest and posttest were not in a normal distribution. The findings showed that after four weeks, GCLA produced a statistically significant improvement in students’ reading comprehension. The result of the Wilcoxon signed-rank test revealed a p-value of < 0.001, which is less than the critical value of 0.05, resulting in the rejection of the null hypothesis. This indicates that using ChatGPT in reading instruction, along with the guidance-based approach, is able to augment the students’ ability to grasp the ideas of the given passages. This study suggests that AI technology, when used properly, can have a positive impact on both the learning process and student achievement.