Language education in a brave new world: A dialectical imagination

Abstract

Rick Kern's (2024, this issue) critical engagement with the implications of technological advancements such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine translation in the postpandemic era should prompt many to reflect on the so-called "existential crisis" we face, both as language teachers and as human beings. Language teachers, like many other professionals (e.g., accountants and lawyers), may fear that they will be replaced by AI (e.g., Felix, 2020) while modern language education programs already face funding cuts in many contexts such as the United States and Australia (e.g., Gao & Zheng, 2019;Lanvers et al., 2018). For this reason, I completely agree with the premise that there is a need for language educators to identify the affordances and constraints presented by technological tools in language education. It is also critical to ascertain how we can draw on intellectual sources to help language teachers make informed use of technological tools to provide the best possible learning experience for language learners. At the same time, however, I wonder if the challenges that technological advancements present for language teachers may require more in-depth elaboration. Such an elaboration might help us better "articulate and communicate the value of language study" (Kern, 2024, this issue, p. 516) for the public and implement the pathways in language (teacher) education advanced by Kern. THE "CRISIS" OF LANGUAGE EDUCATIONIt should be noted that technological developments such as the rise of generative AI pose challenges for most professions. Generative AI tools have already been tested for their ability to replace humans in the fields of accountancy and law (e.g., Choi et al., 2021;Vasarhelyi et al., 2023), and language teachers may also feel their profession is at risk. A counterargument against "fearmongering" discourses about this technological development is the assertion that AI can replace human beings for the completion of individual tasks but cannot replace their jobs altogether. Indeed, professions such as teaching involve complex orchestration of multiple tasks (e.g., delivering content, facilitating thinking, and guiding and supporting learning), which is beyond the current capacity of generative AI tools. As an increasingThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.