Published In

Modern Language Journal

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-8-2024

Subjects

Language -- Education, Artificial intelligence

Abstract

At this point in the history of applications of technology for language learning, there is nothing surprising about uses of video conferencing, social media, language tutorial websites and apps, online textbooks and grammars, translation tools, and video- and audio-based content (among others). As Internet theorist Clay Shirky has described it, “communications tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring” (Shirky, 2008, p. 105), and indeed, there has been considerable interest in more deeply examining humans’ now quotidian uses of digital technologies and modalities as they potentially transform language use and trajectories of development. Examples of incisive research in this area include applications of Vygotskian notions of mediation, flat(ish) ontology approaches such as sociomaterialism that reject a strict separation between human and nonhuman entities, and perspectives that expand the locus of human cognition from a brain-local focus and toward cognition and learning as embodied, embedded, enacted, and distributed across changing social, symbolic, and material contexts, including the incorporation of technologies. Let me add that the primary disruptive technology of the moment is generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), which presents many opportunities as well as considerable risks and challenges to conventionally oriented institutionally located instructed language learning.

In the following sections, I begin with a discussion of the co-evolutionary dynamics intertwining humans and technology. I then describe some of my own (and others’ facilitating) research on uses of technology in language education, address GenAI and its affordances and constraints, and consider the evolving role of language teachers in this era of digital technology ubiquity.

Rights

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2024 The Authors. The Modern Language Journal published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations, Inc.

DOI

10.1111/modl.12932

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/41811

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