Innovation in Language Learning

Generative AI can help language students clarify difficult texts, generate possibilities, and receive rapid feedback, but the same tools can also replace the reading, interpretation, and language production a course is designed to develop. Drawing on classroom implementation in intermediate- and advanced-level Hispanic literature courses since 2023, this presentation introduces a phased integration model that shifts the question from whether AI should be allowed to when it should enter the learning process. Students first encounter and annotate a literary text themselves; AI may then be used for clarification, comparison, or contextual support, giving students an existing interpretation against which to judge the machine's response. The same principle extends across later stages of academic work: brainstorming can be relatively open; source discovery may be assisted, while verification and evaluation remain the student's responsibility; thesis development and drafting protect the student's critical and linguistic voice; peer review remains human; and AI-assisted revision is documented rather than hidden. Anonymous student feedback across multiple semesters shows both the value of AI for comprehension and brainstorming and students' concerns about dependence, inaccuracy, and reduced individual thinking. Phased integration responds to that tension by treating AI use as a pedagogical sequencing problem rather than a simple choice between prohibition and unrestricted use. The goal is not to maximize AI use, but to preserve the intellectual work students need to learn while teaching them to make informed decisions about when assistance is genuinely useful.

 

Keywords: Generative AI; phased integration; language learning; critical AI literacy; literature

 

REFERENCES

 

[1] B. Wessels, “Developing an AI Framework for Learning in Higher Education: A Humanities Perspective from English Literature,” International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education 22 (2025): 65.

[2] S. Wang and H. Zhang, “Pedagogical Partnerships with Generative AI in Higher Education: How Dual Cognitive Pathways Paradoxically Enable Transformative Learning,” International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education 23 (2026): 11.