ANALYSIS PERCEPTIONS’ OF USING GRAMMARLY FOR DEVELOPING WRITING SKILLS BY TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE MODEL (TAM) AT ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

This study aims to investigate the perceptions and acceptance of Grammarly among English Department students at IAIN Kerinci through the lens of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The research is prompted by persistent challenges students face in academic writing, such as grammatical inaccuracies and the need for automated writing tools. This study focuses on three core constructs of TAM: Perceived Usefulness (PU), Perceived Ease of Use (PEU), and Behavioral Intention (BI), while also investigating gender differences as a comparative variable. This research employs a quantitative descriptive and inferential statistics design. The participants are selected using convenience sampling, a non-probability sampling technique chosen based on the accessibility and availability of students who have actively utilized Grammarly based on a 5-poin Likert scale. The analysis involves descriptive statistics to determine perception levels, multiple linear regression to examine the influence of PU and PEU on Behavioral Intention, and an independent samples t-test to identify differences based on gender. The descriptive findings revealed that the students’ perceptions of Perceived Usefulness, Perceive Ease of Use, and Behavioral Intention all fall into the fairly high category. Furthermore, multiple linear regression analysis demonstrated that Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use exert a significant simultaneous influence on Behavioral Intention, accounting for 70,3% of the total variance, with Perceived Usefulness emerging as the primary and most powerful determinant. The independent samples t-test confirmed that there were no statistically significant differences in technology acceptance metrics between male and female students. These findings imply that the TAM framework is highly robust for examining AI tool adoption in EFL contexts, highlighting that students prioritize utility and performance enhancement over simple user friendliness. Consequently, this study suggests that while students should leverage Grammarly as a supplementary resource rather than a total substitute for foundational writing competencies, educators should strategically incorporate AI-based writing assistants into writing instruction to enhance autonomous learning models.