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.

The majority of studies on L2 writing strategies to date has relied heavily on case study as a research methodology employing think-aloud protocols and texts written by the participants. Since the studies dealt with a small number of participants, the findings are inconclusive and sometimes contradictory, and little research on the writing strategies has been conducted in EFL contexts. The present study investigated EFL learners" writing strategies and compared the more-proficient writers" strategies to those of the less-proficient peers. It furthermore examined an assumption of a connection between writing strategy use and writing proficiency. The study was conducted with two writing classes that consisted of 26 more-proficient and 23 less-proficient writers. Two different proficiency groups were divided in proportion to students" scores on the diagnostic composition test. Strategies were measured by means of the modified questionnaire originally developed by Petri？ and Cz？rl (2003). The strategy items were stated in three different phases of the writing process (planning, while-writing, and revising). The results indicated that (1) the more-proficient writers used significantly more planning and while-writing strategies and (2) planning and revising strategies correlated significantly with students" composition scores.