Can ChatGPT Scaffold Postgraduate Students’ Thesis Proposals? Voices of EFL Teachers and Students

Studies on ChatGPT and academic writing often adopt a single-perspective approach, and lack sufficiently articulated theoretical and methodological grounding. The purpose of this study was to investigate the experiences of instructors and graduate students of English as a foreign language in relation to using ChatGPT as a scaffold to create thesis proposals. As part of a mixed-methods design to elicit both positive and negative responses, 120 postgraduate students completed an integrated questionnaire based on the moves analysis framework and the technology acceptance model. To learn more about the perceived advantages and challenges of ChatGPT integration, interviews were conducted with 24 postgraduate students and 12 thesis writing instructors. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to analyze quantitative data and determine how students’ and teachers’ perspectives differed. Although students had generally positive opinions of ChatGPT, teachers were concerned about its limitations in helping students identify research gaps, synthesize previous studies, and effectively plan methodologies. These quantitative findings reveal significant differences in perspectives. According to the qualitative results, most students relied too heavily on generic artificial intelligence outputs and they applied little critical thinking or contextual adaptation. Patterns in topic development, research gap formulation, literature synthesis, theoretical framing, and methodological planning were identified through a five-phase thematic analysis.