“Good Prompts are Sufficient to Produce Good Written Products ✨ Effective Use of Generative AI in Writing Requires Critical AI Literacy”

Book chapter, 2026

The internet abounds with resources promising effortless academic writing through generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), positioning prompt engineering as a shortcut to producing high-quality texts. This chapter challenges that assumption. Framing writing as a technical problem with a technical solution perpetuates a reductive view of writing as a product to be manufactured, rather than a complex social and cognitive process of meaning-making. Students who adopt this plug-and-play approach risk bypassing the challenging but essential work of thought development, undermining both their learning and their identities as writers. To address this, we propose Critical GenAI Literacy (C-GAI-L) as a key component of academic writing instruction in higher education. Grounded in metacognitive awareness and self-regulated learning, C-GAI-L equips students to engage responsibly and effectively with GenAI while remaining the primary agents of their own thinking and writing.