Constructing Arguments in EFL Expository Essays: A Transitivity Analysis of the AI-Teacher Replacement Debate

Abstract

The growing use of artificial intelligence in education has renewed debate over whether teachers can be replaced by machines, a debate that also surfaces in student academic writing. This study examined how a third-semester student in an English Language Education study program in Indonesia linguistically constructed an argument for teacher irreplaceability in an expository essay, using Halliday's transitivity system within Systemic Functional Linguistics. Employing a qualitative, case-based discourse analysis design informed by Critical Discourse Analysis, the study analyzed a single essay obtained through documentation technique; clauses were manually coded into transitivity process types, with a second rater verifying a subset for reliability. Fifty clauses were identified and classified into four of Halliday's six process types. Material processes were most frequent (56%), followed by mental (18%), relational (16%), and verbal processes (10%); behavioral and existential processes did not occur. The writer relied mainly on concrete, action-based clauses to argue that teachers perform functions machines cannot replicate, while relational processes defined the teacher's role and mental processes introduced evaluative belief. These findings indicate the argument was grounded predominantly in empirical, action-oriented evidence rather than abstract or reflective reasoning. The study offers an in-depth illustration of how transitivity choices shape argument construction in English as a Foreign Language writing and suggests that writing instruction should cultivate a broader range of process types to support more evaluative student argumentation.