THE CULTURAL FAMILIARITY TRAP: VIETNAMESE EFL LEARNERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF CULTURAL SIMILARITY WITH CHATGPT
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63506/jilc.1002.441Keywords:
ChatGPT; cultural familiarity; trust in AI; AI-assisted language learning; Vietnamese EFL learnersAbstract
This study explores how Vietnamese EFL learners perceive ChatGPT as a culturally familiar learning partner and how they describe the relationship between this perceived familiarity and trust and reliance in English learning. Guided by perceived cultural similarity and the provisional concept of the cultural familiarity trap, this study used a qualitative exploratory design based on semi-structured interviews with 15 English-major undergraduates. Thematic analysis showed that participants perceived cultural familiarity through educational experiences, learning expectations, and interactional features that they regarded as familiar, rather than through objective cultural characteristics of ChatGPT. Participants discussed trust and reliance alongside these perceptions, but their accounts did not establish that cultural familiarity increased either. They also described skepticism and the need to verify AI-generated information, suggesting that familiarity could coexist with critical awareness. The study contributes a context-sensitive account of learner–AI interaction and presents the cultural familiarity trap as a dynamic, ambivalent process in which perceived familiarity and critical evaluation may occur together
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