  This study applies Activity Theory to investigate how English as a foreign
language (EFL) students prompt generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools
during short story writing. Sixty-seven Hong Kong secondary school students
created generative-AI tools using open-source language models and wrote short
stories with them. The study collected and analyzed the students' generative-AI
tools, short stories, and written reflections on their conditions or purposes
for prompting. The research identified three main themes regarding the purposes
for which students prompt generative-AI tools during short story writing: a
lack of awareness of purposes, overcoming writer's block, and developing,
expanding, and improving the story. The study also identified common
characteristics of students' activity systems, including the sophistication of
their generative-AI tools, the quality of their stories, and their school's
overall academic achievement level, for their prompting of generative-AI tools
for the three purposes during short story writing. The study's findings suggest
that teachers should be aware of students' purposes for prompting generative-AI
tools to provide tailored instructions and scaffolded guidance. The findings
may also help designers provide differentiated instructions for users at
various levels of story development when using a generative-AI tool.
