The Future of Education

The emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools has led foreign language (FL) education into a transformative era. ChatGPT in particular, has gained worldwide attention for empowering teachers to foster language skills with immediate feedback, tailored learning experiences and authentic conversational contexts. However, there seems to bea considerable research gap in relation to FL teachers’ adoption and adaptation of these tools in both formal and informal teaching settings. The present study intends to address that gap by dealing with three core aspects: teacher challenges that involve digital and pedagogical issues; reflections on informal initiatives that focus on self-guided approaches and their impact on students’ language skills and motivation; and strategies that document techniques for effective integration of ChatGPT and management of accuracies.

To investigate these aspects, an online questionnaire addressing FL teachers from various regions and educational levels, is employed. It examines teacher challenges, reflections and strategies. All items in the questionnaire are close ended, enabling gathering of quantitative data. Descriptive and inferential statistics aim to identify correlations of teacher characteristics, and their AI integration practices, perceived challenges, most preferred strategies for leveraging ChatGPT effectively in the teaching process and ideal professional development models. In the final analysis, the present research aims to synthesize insights originating from various teaching contexts, presenting how AI enhances FL learning and simultaneously promotes professional growth. Adding to that, its findings contribute to informing institutional policies, enriching the repertoire and crafting the design of teacher training practices worldwide while ensuring the development’/advancement of AI solutions in FL education.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, foreign language education, professional development