Recent years have witnessed a growing application of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technology in writing instruction. Students should mobilise their metacognitive strategies during this endeavour to maximise the benefits of GenAI while avoiding the potential negative impacts. Within the context of tertiary education in Hong Kong, this qualitative research investigates 13 postgraduate students' metacognitive strategies when utilising ChatGPT for English academic writing. Using data collected from audio recordings, semi-structured interviews and human-GenAI chat logs, we explored students' metacognitive strategies within five dimensions, namely, planning, monitoring, evaluating, information management and debugging. The identified themes and subthemes within each dimension exhibited similarities to those observed in other educational settings. Meanwhile, certain metacognitive strategies (e.g., debugging) were found to be unique to the context of GenAI-supported academic writing. This study contributes to the literature in two ways. Firstly, it provides a detailed and thorough understanding of metacognitive strategies, complementing the extensive quantitative research in this area. Secondly, this research expands the framework of metacognitive strategies to the context of GenAI-supported academic writing learning. Copyright © 2025 Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Although motivational variables have been extensively examined in the context of English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL), they have received little attention when learning Chinese as a second language (CSL), especially among elementary school students in lower grades. Considering the significant impact of psychological variables on language learning and the dilemma of Chinese reading for non-Chinese speaking (NCS) students from Hong Kong, this study examined the structural relationship between the ideal L2 self and intrinsic motivation, as well as their impacts on the learning engagement and reading performance of 475 Hong Kong first-grade NCS students. Two findings were noteworthy: (1) under the simultaneous consideration of the above-mentioned variables, intrinsic motivation affects learning engagement and Chinese reading performance more than the ideal self; (2) the indirect effects of intrinsic motivation on reading performance through learning engagement are more significant than its direct effect on reading performance. The implications of the findings are discussed. Copyright ©2024 De Gruyter.

Integrated group discussion (IGD) tasks represent a new type of integrated speaking task that requires students to communicate with their peers after comprehending and using provided source materials. With its potential to enhance effective communication and information literacy, IGD stands at the core of language education. Although the IGD task type has become increasingly popular, its construct is still unexplored. In this study, 124 Hong Kong undergraduate students completed an IGD task and a group discussion (GD) task (i.e., without source materials) in Putonghua. Four factors, speech and expression, content with source use, interaction, and language usage, were extracted to represent IGD performance. Two indicators of GD performance (linguistic expression and engagement in interaction) significantly predicted IGD performance, explaining 21.9 % of its total variance. The large proportion of unexplained IGD performance variance suggests that IGD tasks may be worth implementing. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed in details. Copyright © 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston.