Illocutionary Explanation Planning for Source-Faithful Explanations in Retrieval-Augmented Language Models

Researchers introduce chain-of-illocution (CoI) prompting to improve source faithfulness in retrieval-augmented language models, achieving up to 63% gains in source adherence for programming education tasks. The study reveals that standard RAG systems exhibit low fidelity to source materials, with non-RAG models performing worse, while a user study confirms improved faithfulness does not compromise user satisfaction.