ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Psychology in Education
This article is part of the Research TopicSocial-Emotional Learning and Intercultural Competence in the Age of Generative AIView all articles
Predictors of AI Awareness among EFL Learners: Gender, English Proficiency, ICT Usage, and the Personality Traits
Provisionally accepted
Gülten Genç*
İbrahim Rıhawi- Faculty of Education, Department of English Language Teaching, Inonu Universitesi, Malatya, Türkiye
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
This study examined English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' awareness of artificial intelligence (AI) and its associations with gender, Big Five personality traits, self-assessed English proficiency, and information and communication technology (ICT) usage. A quantitative, cross-sectional survey design was employed, and participants were selected through convenience sampling. Data were collected from 155 EFL university students at a public university in Türkiye during the spring semester of 2024. Statistical analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics (Version 26.0). A K-means cluster analysis identified two distinct personality profiles—Introverted–Neurotic and Open–Extraverted. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was then conducted to examine whether gender, personality profile, English proficiency, and ICT usage predicted differences across four dimensions of AI awareness: Basic Knowledge, Benefit, Bias, and Negative Forecast. No statistically significant differences emerged across demographic or personality factors, suggesting a relatively homogeneous level of AI awareness among EFL learners. Stepwise regression analyses revealed that Openness and Extraversion were significant predictors of overall AI awareness. These findings indicate that personality characteristics—particularly openness to experience—play a meaningful role in shaping learners' engagement with AI technologies in language education.
Keywords: Artificial intelligence awareness, Big Five Personality Traits, English as a Foreign Language, language proficiency, Educational Technology
Received: 11 Oct 2025; Accepted: 19 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Genç and Rıhawi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Gülten Genç
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.