Language masters & language techies: a digital romance?
The new language models with AI (like ChatGPT) are turning education upside down. In foreign language teaching, it is doing so a tad more: can you still expect your students to produce an authentic text? Should they still be able to do so without help? Or will you instead use the tools for yourself, to make up exam questions or to develop teaching materials tailored to your student. The possibilities are endless! Katrien Dewaele, teacher educator and researcher at UCLL, explores the impact of AI on the future of foreign language teaching and shares insights following the online survey ‘The use of artificial intelligence among foreign language teachers’.
Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, not a day goes by without Artificial Intelligence popping up somewhere in current affairs. We are engulfed by a tsunami of AI tools. AI has the potential to be a game changer for education in general, especially foreign language education. Large language models (LLMs) put the very foundation of foreign language education at risk: learning to communicate effectively. Will this come into question now? Do we need to reinvent ourselves as foreign language teachers? Or should we rethink the effectiveness of foreign language teaching itself?
The impact of AI on foreign language teaching is often compared to the impact of the calculator on teaching arithmetic. Even then, concerned voices echoed that it would have a negative impact on students’ numeracy skills. However, the comparison only partially holds true. It is true that generative AI – like a calculator – can provide so-called ‘cognitive offloading’, where you can outsource brain work to technology to free up mental space for other, more complex mental tasks. Take, for example, a 17-year-old student who needs to write an argumentative essay in French. She can use ChatGPT to generate a first draft with GenAI covering the linguistic aspects. That way, the student can focus on articulating and elaborating on the arguments. Compare it to a student using a calculator to do complex calculations, allowing them to focus on the thinking steps.
But that is where the comparison with the calculator stops. Comparing the power of modern language models to the calculator detracts from the complexity and disruptive nature of this technology because generative AI is a new form of technological infrastructure – some even see it as a new form of electricity. Above all, GenAI allows for the creation of tools in which users interact with the technology in new ways. And I don’t see myself interacting my calculator in those ways anytime soon. It is therefore essential to understand how those new relationships between AI and the other stakeholders in education (students, teachers, policymakers) might take shape.
Is AI a new partner in foreign language teaching?
How do foreign language teachers in secondary and adult education view the advent of AI or GenAI as a new partner within foreign language teaching? We asked them just that in a survey. Well aware that the survey is limited in scope and that we should therefore be careful making general conclusions, a number of interesting trends emerge that can inspire us as researchers, teacher educators, teachers and policymakers.
For instance, we saw that many foreign language teachers feel their sector is being shaken up: 76% expect AI to make foreign language teaching change a lot. But there is no immediate consensus on which direction that evolution will take:
Therefore, it is worth exploring possible future scenarios for foreign language education with all stakeholders involved. Not just to predict the future but to imagine a potential future. We did just that with expertise centre Education & Development (UCLL) in a roundtable discussion with experts in foreign language teaching and digital education. That left us wanting more!
Supporting the teacher
Another finding is that almost half of the foreign language teachers surveyed (49.3%) know which AI they can use in designing their lessons. Upon further investigation, this appears to be mainly and almost exclusively ChatGPT. Many respondents (78.9%) believe that AI can help in designing their lessons and they appear willing to use AI to do so (80.3%), but only a small group of teachers surveyed (32.4%) feel sufficiently competent to use AI effectively for this purpose. Thus, there is a need for training.
Supporting the student
When we ask teachers about ways to use AI to enhance their students’ learning, we discover an even greater need. Barely 31% of respondents know which AI they can use for this purpose. Again, ChatGPT was often mentioned as a tool, alongside translation tools such as DeepL. A large group (63.3%) believes that AI can help students learn foreign languages better and is willing (66.2%) to have students actively and meaningfully engage with AI in their lessons.
So, there are more teachers who see AI as support for themselves than as support for their students. Another striking finding: only 15.5% of respondents feel competent to get their students to actively and meaningfully work with AI so that they learn better. Therefore, we should not only focus on training courses that teach teachers how to use AI themselves. Teachers also need training courses that teach them how to use AI to support their students’ learning, because clever use of AI technology can help teachers in that task too.
We conclude that the foreign language teachers surveyed are ready to invest in their new relationship with AI. That romance certainly won’t be all roses, but then again, who said love is a verb?
And what do you think?
Share your views on the impact of artificial languages on foreign language teaching!
Interested in more?
For this blog, Katrien Dewaele consulted these sources:
- Dewaele, K. (2024). Betekent Artificiële Intelligentie het einde van het (vreemde)taalonderwijs as we know it? OnderWijsTijd (Gompel&Svacina), 4.
- https://nl.superprof.be/blog/oorsprong-wiskunde/
- Lodge, J. M., Yang, S., Furze, L., & Dawson, P. (2023). It’s not like a calculator, so what is the relationship between learners and generative artificial intelligence? Learning: Research and Practice, 9(2), 117-124.
- Mosco, V. (2005). The digital sublime: Myth, power, and cyberspace. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10. 7551/mitpress/2433.001.0001 Nückles, M., Roelle, J., Glogger-Frey, I., Wal
- Ng, A. (2018). AI is the new electricity. O'Reilly Media, Incorporated.
- Dewaele, K. (2024). Vragenlijst AI en het vreemdetaalonderwijs. Afgenomen in de periode januari 2024 – maart 2024. Education & Development, UCLL. N=71 respondenten
AI in education: between ethics, detection and innovation
How should education deal with new AI technology like ChatGPT? Ban it, allow it freely or is there a golden mean to look for? And what should students do with teachers who don't know either? Ann Fastré (itec KU Leuven) describes a real-life quest, and concludes that learning is the solution!
Katrien Dewaele
Katrien Dewaele is a lecturer in French (language and didactics) at the Faculty of Teacher Education of UCLL. She is also a researcher at Education & Development of UCLL. Her research focuses on how to promote and facilitate learning processes in an evidence-informed way and enhanced by technology. In her teaching practice and research work, she bridges the gap between insights from educational research and classroom practice. Katrien is an expert within the field of foreign language didactics and has already shared this expertise in several publications, at (inter)national conferences, and in teacher training programs with Teacher Design Teams.
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