28.04.2024
Hundreds of teachers of community
languages in New South Wales have heard at their annual conference at Sydney
University that Artificial Intelligence is going to be a major determinant in
how they teach their language in the future.
They have heard that the
proponents of AI want to remove the culture from language teaching and simply
make it another way of talking.
Joseph Lo Bianco, Emeritus Professor
of Language and Literacy Education at the Melbourne Graduate School of
Education, was a key note speaker at the annual conference of teachers of
community languages organised by the NSW Federation of Community Language
Schools.
Whilst he praised the value of
Artificial Intelligence in the classroom, he warned that it would have very
negative effects. In his address entitled Rage
against the Machine, Professor Lo Bianco said: “It allows more
flexibility in a class room to deal specifically with different kids in a
different way, according to their progress, their interest and their
capability. “The concerns that people have
about the influence of artificial intelligence are on teaching in general and
in particular on teaching of language as well as on language itself and how
it is used. “This internationalisation of
communication is happening for no better reason than wanting to save money. Professor Lo Bianco warned that
there was already alarmism about this. “Some academics think that
artificial intelligence will kill off the remaining university language
teaching departments. Some say this is the end of community language
education and some education administrators support this. “Thanks to AI people may not feel
the need to learn a second language and Australian students seem to be losing
interest in learning another language. There is a serious decline in language
numbers.” “This is the biggest single
challenge we face. It’s not the technology which is itself rich with support
for language learning. The danger is how it will be interpreted by people who
think language is only about passing over very basic messages to someone”, he
said. The President of the Federation,
Lucia Johns, said today: “Professor Lo Bianco has issued a very serious
warning which we should all absorb, respond to and act on right now.” “There are specific cultures
which are particular to languages. So, you can see the beginnings of what is going
on here – the separation of culture from language and parcelling off of language teaching to English, which will
be done through English translated books.
2 The NSW Federation of Community language
Schools supports the 3000 voluntary teachers who run classes in 583 locations
around the state for 35,000 children studying over 60 different languages. “There would be fewer teachers
engaged if this vision were to be realised”, he said.
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