Here are more questions to think about:
Employability: Is being familiar with machine translation tool actually increasing Employability? If machine translation tool is going to be very common in the industry, is impeding students from utilizing them even meaningful? Does employability represent the sole objective of educational endeavours?
Specification of English Proficiency Levels: Should the attainment of a specified level of English proficiency be explicitly outlined as a learning outcome?
Rethinking Entry Level Requirements – is 6 or 6.5 in IELTS as a required score too low as a prerequisite?
Adjusting Expectations: Should we be clear with our expectation – should we position our course purpose so that the students understand it’s more about the experience of writing, not just the end-product? Finding your voice is important; and you cannot do that with ChatGPT. Perhaps we should make the students understand that even if they want to work in their countries, having English literacy is still important?
Further Questions to Ask: Should we adjust the learning outcome to make it easier for the low-level students? Perhaps allowing them to write their essays with machine translation tools?
This research is going somewhere.
I have talked to Helen McAllister, the Associate Dean of International Student Experience, regarding this research. Her team is also conducting very similar research. We are trying to amalgamate my research findings into a comprehensive guideline that will address the use of machine translation tools for both students and teachers in the entire university.