The Future of Education

Abstract

What is the place of physical elements in the language classroom in the age of artificial intelligence? This paper summarizes the results of five years of implementing the Scaffolded Language Emergence (SLE) approach in foreign language teaching, with a particular focus on the role of physical elements in learning. SLE is an approach that promotes language emergence in adult learners and was developed by Dr. Donald Kiraly at the University of Mainz. To date, it has been applied to more than fifteen languages, including minority and endangered languages.

The paper presents experiences from the Institute of Applied Language Studies at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, where SLE has been used in foreign language instruction, as well as its application in supporting the teaching of Lower Sorbian, an endangered West Slavic minority language. Drawing on concrete classroom examples, the paper demonstrates how physical interaction, movement, objects, and other embodied activities contribute to learner engagement, meaning-making, and sustained language development.

The findings underscore the continued importance of face-to-face teaching contexts that facilitate the integration of physical elements, particularly at a time when language instruction is increasingly shifting to virtual environments. The paper argues that embodied, socially situated learning practices offer distinct advantages that complement digital and artificial intelligence–based learning tools, and that SLE provides a viable framework for maintaining these benefits in contemporary language education, offering also critical advantages for the revitalization, maintenance, and teaching of minority and endangered languages.

Keywords: SLE, Scaffolded Language Emergence, language learning and acquisition, language teaching, embodied activities

References

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[3] Kiraly, D., & Finocchiaro, B. (2020). SLE: Un approccio didattico per facilitare l’emergenza delle lingue straniere: Dalla teoria alla pratica (1st ed.). Akademische Verlagsgemeinschaft München.

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