Siyi Wang, Yongliang Wang, Mehdi Solhi
ABSTRACT While extensive studies have explored the influence of teacher‐student interpersonal behaviours in conventional higher education settings, their effects on students' experiences in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI)‐mediated learning environments remain insufficiently investigated. To address this gap, the present study conducted a ten‐week instructional intervention with two groups of Chinese EFL students (experimental group: N = 36; control group: N = 35), comparing the effects of traditional teacher‐student interpersonal behaviours and GenAI feedback on students' achievement emotions in EFL writing. Findings from both quantitative and qualitative data reveal that, compared with the GenAI feedback group, students in the teacher‐mediated feedback group experienced higher levels of pride and lower levels of anxiety. In contrast, other achievement emotions such as enjoyment, hope, anger, shame, hopelessness, and boredom showed no clear differences between the two groups. The findings provide valuable pedagogical implications for integrating emerging technologies to foster positive achievement emotions and enhance writing performance in EFL contexts.