English as Foreign Language (EFL) writing is challenging for students due to the lack of related lexical resources to inspire them for meaningful writing besides grammar feedback. Moreover, it is crucial to design personalized feedback based on students’ original writings in helping to improve their writing abilities. Therefore, we developed Smart RoamLingo app to help writing meaningful content in authentic contexts with sample sentences based on texts generated by recognition technologies named as AI-Sample Sentences (AI-SS) and writing qualities with revision suggestions based on personal original writings named as AI-Writing Feedback (AI-WF). 104 undergraduate students were assigned into an experimental group (EG) and two control groups. EG significantly outperformed the other groups in the post-test. In EG, AI-SS can help the contextualization to produce comprehensive content actively while AI-WF can help the personalization to improve the writing quality through several revisions. Hence, the cohesion and consistency of their writing can be enhanced. Further, the total number of revisions in practices and the assignment score can significantly predict the post-test. Moreover, EG students revealed that Smart RoamLingo was useful for EFL writing. Therefore, it is strongly suggested to use Smart RoamLingo with AI-SS and AI-WF for EFL writing in authentic contexts.

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PurposeThis study aimed to investigate learning behaviors deeply in flipped classrooms. In addition, it is worth considering how to help learners through recognition technology with natural language processing (NLP) when learners have question and answer (Q&A). In addition, the Internet of Things (IoT) can be utilized to make the physical learning environment more comfortable and smarter.Design/methodology/approachThe authors developed smart learning environment (SLE) with smart mechanisms supported by recognition technology, NLP and IoT to help learners and employed scaffolding to facilitate their group discussions. This study is an explanatory research to investigate graduate learners' learning behavior when they are collaborating with group members and interacting with the environment in flipped classroom using the proposed SLE.FindingsThe results revealed that learners who collaborated more while coediting had significant learning achievement, and NLP sufficiently addressed their questions. Physical conditions of the SLE were comfortable for learners. They perceived that SLE could facilitate group discussions with scaffolding.Practical implicationsThis study suggests to utilize flipped classrooms with technologies, e.g. Google Slides integration, to help learners to do more collaboration and use smart mechanisms, e.g. Q&A with NLP, to make learners more interacting during the discussion process.Originality/valueThe proposed SLE can record and analyze smartly their collaboration meaningfully with group members and interact with the environment. Accordingly, researchers found that collaboration in flipped classrooms can help their learning achievement, and it is worth being widely promoted.

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