Speaker
Description
First-year EFL preparatory students often struggle with reading persistence when facing long and difficult academic texts. This challenge can negatively affect their academic readiness and long- term language development. Although mindful reading and AI assisted learning have been studied separately, their combination as a classroom intervention to support reading persistence is still largely unexplored. This study proposes a two phase pedagogical framework that integrates Generative AI prompting strategies into mindful reading activities to improve student engagement and reading persistence. Using a one group pretest posttest design, this research is conducted with 25 first-year EFL preparatory students over 7 weeks at a university in Hanoi, Vietnam. In Phase 1 (Weeks 1–3), students practice post-reading reflection through traditional paper journaling to build basic self-awareness. In Phase 2 (Weeks 4–7), this activity changes into guided AI interactions, where students used specific prompting strategies to maintain structured dialogues with a chatbot acting as a learning facilitator. Quantitative data will be collected at the beginning of Week 1 and the end of Week 7 using the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) and a reading test designed to measure persistence under time pressure and long texts; these data will be analyzed using a paired-t test. Qualitative data, including handwritten journals, AI chat logs, and semi-structured interviews from selected cases, will be analyzed to show how AI dialogue provides emotional support and motivation. The expected results might show significant improvements in both mindfulness scores and reading persistence, indicating that structured AI prompting can effectively support EFL preparatory learners. These anticipated findings aim to offer practical insights for EFL educators seeking to use AI tools purposefully in reading classes, especially in designing prompt based activities that reduce task abandonment and build cognitive endurance when students face challenging academic texts.
Keywords: Mindful reading, Generative AI, Reading persistence, Prompting strategies, EFL learners, Academic reading.
