Innovation in Language Learning

In my presentation, I will address the usefulness of AI, machine translation, and language learning apps for language learning. I will focus on university language and linguistics courses, offer a few examples of successful practices, and discuss the shifts in the importance of particular language skills in our digital age. Contemporary research in didactics exhibits the discrepancy between students’ readiness to use newly available AI tools and teachers’ resistance to embrace them. For example, the quantitative study by Dakakni and Safa (2023) found that while 89.4 of students who participated in the study were “willing to use AI to complete their coursework should university punitive measures be removed”, instructors' main interest in the training for AI was to learn how to prevent students from misusing it. Holbah (2022) pointed out that while students are keen to use SMDs (Smart Mobile Devices) for language acquisition, teachers are not making any use of this practice. I will argue that AI and other digital tools can improve our university language courses if we, language teachers, learn to use them effectively. I will also point out that such effectiveness may come with a price – not only do we have to abandon some didactic convictions inherited from the last century, but we also must reconsider the language skills we want to teach in the digital age. Finally, I will stress that a solid linguistic training is more than ever beneficial to progress in language proficiency, complemented by machine translation and language learning applications.