Exploring Mongolian Trilingual Students’ Perceptions About Academic and Affective Impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Technologies: A Descriptive Qualitative Study

The incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies into education has received increasing attention over the past couple of years. However, the perceived impacts of such technologies by trilingual learners have remained unaddressed by scholars. Compared with conventional second or foreign language learners, trilingual learners may need to coordinate languages with different levels of proficiency and functions while also coping with unequal AI support across languages. To fill the gap, this descriptive qualitative study drew on technology acceptance model (TAM) and control‐value theory (CVT) to examine Mongolian trilingual learners’ perceptions about the academic and affective impacts of AI tools. A sample of 40 Mongolian trilingual students in Inner Mongolia, China were asked to complete an open‐ended questionnaire and attend an interview. The results of thematic analysis demonstrated that AI technologies had imposed several positive and negative academic and affective impacts on trilingual students. Particularly, it was found that AI adoption could improve learning efficiency, autonomy, and agency, but over‐reliance on AI tools might lead to dependency, plagiarism acts, surface learning, and reduced critical thinking. Regarding affective consequences, the students found AI adoption exciting, motivating, and emotionally safe, while they endorsed the possibility of anxiety, stress, fear, emotional tension, and emotional detachment. The study discusses the findings and provides practical implications for trilingual teachers, students, and policymakers by enhancing their AI and emotional literacy.