This study investigates the conversation strategies that Korean middle school English learners employ when interacting with AI-based writing tutor chatbots. A total of 79 eighth-grade students at a middle school in Seoul engaged in English process writing tasks with ChatGPT API-powered writing tutor chatbots, composing an argumentative and an expository essay. Their dialogues during the pre-writing and drafting stages were analyzed using content analysis, with a focus on linguistic modification strategies within situated writing contexts. The results reveal that learners actively interacted with the AI writing tutor chatbots, employing various strategies to refine chatbot responses, clarify misunderstandings, and negotiate meaning. These strategies demonstrated both backward- and forward-oriented approaches, allowing students to iteratively improve their writing through dynamic interaction. Based on these findings, the study provides pedagogical recommendations for optimizing AI chatbot-mediated conversations in L2 English writing instruction.

Frequent interactions between teachers and learners take place in cyber education. It was found that tutors in cyber education play important roles in interactions. This is to acknowledge the characteristics of cyber education by watching and analyzing the interactions between learners and tutors that performed in the course of “cyber English writing class” of a cyber university. The main tools of interactions, e-bulletin board and e-writing assignment board have been quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed. In order to learn whether the degree of the learners’ participation influences the degree of the learners’ achievement, a correlation analysis between the two variables was conducted. A questionnaire was also conducted to learn how the learners respond to tutors’ feedback in their interactions. This study also investigated any differences of the attitude and satisfaction degree in a cyber writing class according to the learners’ participation degree. It was found that the degree of the learners’ achievement and the learners’ participation are most correlated especially when the learners are in the medium level of the academic ability. Also, the learners generally think the tutors’ feedback gives to them positive influences.