Using the Online Paraphrasing Tool Quillbot to Assist Students in Paraphrasing the Source Information: English-majored Students’ Perceptions

Paraphrasing plays a crucial role in academic writing as it aids writers in avoiding plagiarism. However, for EFL learners, especially those who are not experienced in the academic world, paraphrasing is a challenging skill. As a solution, they rely on online paraphrasing tools such as paraphrasing-tool.com, Quillbot.com, prepotseo.com or spinbot.com for help. These tools have been proved by several studies to be beneficial for students to overcome the difficulties in academic writing in general and paraphrasing skills in particular. However, little is known about how EFL learners perceive these online paraphrasing tools as assistants in writing academically. Therefore, this quantitative study is conducted with the aim to shed light on the perceptions of students on using the online paraphrasing tool Quillbot to paraphrase source information. The sample comprises 220 second-year students who are studying English Linguistics at a public university in Vietnam. Data, which is collected through a questionnaire, is analyzed using IBM SPSS version 25. Findings indicate that participants hold a favourable attitude towards Quillbot and this online paraphrasing tool does affect their attitude toward paraphrasing source text as well as their language development.