THE EFFECT OF LOCAL CULTURE-THEMED STORY WRITING TRAINING WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TOOLS ON PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS’ WRITING PERFORMANCE IN THE ESSENTIAL WRITING SKILLS COURSE AT UNIVERSITAS LANCANG KUNING

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the effect of local culture-themed story writing training with artificial intelligence tools on the writing performance in first semester pre-service teachers. A quasi-experimental design with a one-group posttest-only approach was employed, involving 24 first-semester students from Class 1.1 who were enrolled in the Essential Writing Skills course. The instructional treatment was integrated with local culture themes (traditional houses, clothes, traditions, and games) with AI-assisted writing activities using ChatGPT across four training sessions. Students' writing performance was assessed using an analytic rubric covering five dimensions: content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and one-sample t test. The results show that the post-test score (x̄ = 82.85) significantly exceeded the predetermined criterion (t = 20.706, p < 0.05). Among the assessed dimensions, content demonstrated was the highest performance (M = 25.60), followed by language use (M = 19.85), organization (M = 17.04), vocabulary (M = 16.46), and mechanics (M = 3.90). The study concludes that the integration of local culture themes and AI tools functioned synergistically as structured instructional support, with cultural familiarity facilitating idea generation and AI assistance supporting linguistic and organizational management throughout the writing process.