Innovation in Language Learning

The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has put language educators at the forefront of a massive technological shift. Since DeepL was released in 2016, the widespread use of machine translation (MT) systems by students has raised significant concerns, forcing language teachers to grapple with integrating such tools into their pedagogical practices. The need to adapt and evolve has only intensified with the release of tools such as ChatGPT. Previous studies have shown that language teachers find it challenging to open their classroom to AI tools [1;2]. Accordingly, there is a pressing need to empower language teachers to harness the potential of AI and transform challenges into opportunities. While much research is currently oriented towards the implications of AI for language learning, little is known about how to best train the trainers. To address this, our presentation will report on two years of training interventions on AI and MT Literacy [3] for university language teachers. The training sessions were based on the results of a large-scale survey on MT in higher education [2], action-research projects [4] and the teaching experiences of the session facilitators. We employed semi-guided retrospective discussions to gather data from the intervention team and post-intervention interviews to obtain insights from participants. The findings reveal key factors that can equip language teachers to integrate AI tools into language teaching. The insights gained from this study provide valuable guidance for educators, curriculum designers, and policymakers alike.