On 13 February 2025, the AI Lang team had an enriching meeting with Rochane Kherbouche (https://www.centre-inffo.fr/site-centre-inffo/inffo-formation/articles-dinffo-formation/rochane-kherbouche-agent-ia-collaboratif), a French AI expert and founder of a thriving WhatsApp community (IArena Éducative) focused on educational AI. Key discussion points included:

• The role of AI in supporting pedagogy, as opposed to vice versa
• Ethical concerns about AI’s environmental impact and data protection
• Concrete examples of AI empowering teachers to enhance teaching, streamline tasks, and personalise learning
• The necessity to rethink teacher training to integrate AI in the classroom (as many French students already use AI for homework)
• The need to integrate AI into teachers’ assessment methods, rather than focus on how traditional assessment methods can be subverted by AI.

Following this initial, and highly productive meeting, which provided opportunities to learn how to use NotebookLM and customised chatbots, the AI Lang team are looking forward to future productive synergies with specialists in the field. If you have published recently about the use of AI in language teaching or are involved in initiatives about AI use, and are interested in the possibility of a meeting, please contact Achilleas Kostoulas (achilleas@kostoulas.com).

Author: Achilleas Kostoulas, coordinator of the ECML project “AI for language education” (2024-27) www.ecml.at/AI-lang (available in English and French)

During the AI Lang team meeting in Graz on 27–28 January 2025 it was  decided that Achilleas Kostoulas will take on the project coordination, as Merilyn Meristo will move on to a challenging leadership position in another research project. Also in connection with this restructuring, Aleksandra Ljalikova has been invited to join our team as Communications Officer. We are saddened by the departure of Prof. Meristo, and we are grateful for the leadership and guidance she provided over the last year. Equally, we are delighted to be joined by Prof. Ljalikova, who has impressive experience in using digital tools and AI in language education.

During the meeting, we worked together to refine and improve the structure and envisaged content of our outputs. We expect to have an update on the project website in the coming weeks. Looking ahead into the future, we are preparing to launch a Moodle course that will help teachers and teacher educators integrate AI into their teaching. Also in preparation is a draft set of guidelines for the meaningful and ethical use of AI in language education.

Another development that we are looking forward to is the upcoming workshop, which will bring together AI experts on 25–26 November 2025. We have already laid down important groundwork for preparing the workshop, and we are looking forward to welcoming participants from across Europe to Graz!

Achilleas Kostoulas, project coordinator 

• ECML project website “AI for language education” (2024-27) (available in English and French): www.ecml.at/AI-lang

 Do you wish to participate in the workshop?

Individuals with a special interest and professional background in the topic of this particular project are invited to take up contact with the ECML National Nominating Authority in their country so that they can be considered for participation in the corresponding project workshop.

Since the beginning of 2024, the AI for language education (AILang) project has been actively engaged in exploring and documenting how language teachers use AI tools to support teaching and learning. 

In our kick-off expert meeting, which took place on 18 and 19 March, the project team developed a multilingual questionnaire to map how AI is being used across national settings, what affordances teachers are aware of, and what apprehensions they have regarding the effective and ethical use of AI in language education. This survey has now been completed, and we would like to thank all participants for their time and insights. The initial findings of the survey suggest that AI resources were widely used: over half the respondents reported having used AI tools to create materials, organise lesson plans, teach all language skills and improve students’ vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. Some examples they provided included: 

• generating text for classroom use
•  creating comprehension questions for reading or listening exercises
• creating different versions of learning and assessment tasks
• rephrasing instructions (e.g., “This helps me to have a different perspective on what I write”) 
• generating images that correspond to a description or text

That said, many teachers reported challenges in prompt generation, finding ways to integrate creativity into AI-assisted language education, and avoiding plagiarism. Concerns were also raised about training and the cost of AI tools. The teachers also reported fears regarding being replaced, or language education becoming obsolete, as well as the perceived decline in students’ production skills.

Based on the findings from this survey, the AILang team is currently working on developing resources that can help educate teachers about AI-assisted language education. To that end, we have been experimenting with various AI resources (e.g., CoPilot, ChatGTP, Claude, DeepL, Diff.it, etc.)  and exploring their potential and limitations. Our insights are used to produce teacher education materials that can help to: 

• familiarise teachers with AI resources and encourage them to experiment with them 
• develop their capacity to meaningfully integrate multiple AI tools into their teaching 
• encourage reflection on the pedagogically effective and ethical use of AI technology in language education. 

An online learning space has already been created to host these learning resources, and we are currently in the process of populating it with resources. 

We also organised an online event for teachers to exchange ideas and good practices regarding the use of AI in their language classrooms. Our first BarCamp event, on 5 November 2024, brought together teachers from Armenia, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, France, Georgia, Greece, Italy, Morocco, North Macedonia, Serbia and Sweden. In the focused discussions that took place participants shared their insights from the use of AI tools, presented innovative teaching ideas, discussed difficulties they have faced, and received peer feedback on their ideas and practices. We are in the process of analysing the insights from the BarCamp and will follow up with more information about it shortly.

Further ahead, we are also looking forward to our next international workshop, which will take place in Graz in November 2025. This will be an opportunity to present our ongoing work and discuss how it can be made more useful for language educators in diverse settings. If you are interested in participating, you can follow this space (www.ecml.at/AI-lang)  for updates, and liaise with the National Nominating Authorities in your country for details.  

Despite being launched just this year, the AILang project has already made considerable strides in understanding the current applications of AI in language education. These initial achievements mark only the beginning of the project's broader goals. Looking ahead, AILang is poised to launch new initiatives aimed at empowering educators with AI-driven tools and insights, transforming the future of language learning. 

Merilyn Meristo, coordinator of AILang

• ECML project website “AI for language education” (2024-27) (available in English and French) : www.ecml.at/AI-lang