Developing English academic writing and AI literacy in an EFL co-curricular secondary school context

This article describes the implementation of two co-curricular interventions addressing academic writing and AI literacy gaps in Hong Kong secondary schools serving students from disadvantaged educational backgrounds. The interventions used identical six-module curricula but differed in structure: one comprised eight weekly one-hour lessons serving 18 students from one school; the other was a four-hour workshop serving 16 students from two schools. The modules progressed logically from foundational writing concepts through AI literacy development to independent application. Students learned genre-based and process-based approaches to academic writing with prompt engineering skills. They practiced crafting effective prompts and integrating AI-generated content into academic writing tasks. Results from Kahoots, students’ writing tasks, and pre- and post-intervention surveys show the interventions enhance students’ academic writing and AI literacy. The surveys revealed significant improvements in students’ AI literacy skills, with no statistical difference between intervention formats, suggesting that condensed workshops can be as effective as extended courses. Key challenges included varying student English proficiency levels, technical issues with inter-school document sharing, and time management pressures. Recommendations for implementing similar interventions in low-resource EFL schools include bilingual instructional materials, strategic student grouping, pre-intervention technical preparation, and interschool resource pooling.