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June 3, 2026Journal of English for Academic Purposes0 citationsOpen Access

How do university students ask GenAI to revise or proofread a text? A framework for analysing prompting strategies

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GBGraham BurtonFree University of Bozen-BolzanoFVFrancesca VitaliUniversity of VeronaCLCecilia LazzerettiFree University of Bozen-Bolzano

Key Points

  • This research aims to analyze how university students prompt GenAI for text revision and the effectiveness of those prompts.
  • Analyzed prompts from 70 university students requesting GenAI text revisions.
  • Developed an empirical framework to examine content and structure of prompts.
  • Evaluated the consistency of prompting behavior and use of pragmatic elements.
  • Students' prompting behaviors showed significant quantitative inconsistencies.
  • On average, prompts contained few pragmatic elements, with even fewer unique instances.
  • The framework raised awareness of varying prompting strategies impacting GenAI's responses.

Abstract

• An empirical framework to analyse the content and structure of prompts requesting GenAI text revision is proposed. • The framework is applied to a dataset of prompts provided by 70 university students. • The prompting behaviour of the sample group is inconsistent from a quantitative point of view. • On average, students used relatively few pragmatic elements in each prompt, and an even smaller number of unique pragmatic elements. • The framework can be used to raise awareness of differing prompting strategies and explore their effects on GenAI output.

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Cite This Study

Burton et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a1fc5b7dee9eb8c0dce7114https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2026.101706
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