Governed Syntax-Informed AI Adaptation for Sustainable Academic Reading: Fidelity, Comprehension, and Near-Transfer

AI-mediated text adaptation may improve access to sustainability knowledge when linguistic support preserves disciplinary meaning and remains subject to human review. This study examined the Syntactic Accessibility for Sustainable Digital Texts framework in a within-participant mixed-methods experiment with 120 Arabic-speaking university EFL learners and six source passages. Participants read original, generically simplified, and syntax-informed AI-adapted texts; both AI conditions passed a common fidelity gate.