The Brave New World of Language Teaching

“Thank you for the wonderful lecture, story...On a very high, academic level, you told a very beautiful story that should be told all around the world, and it should be told many, many times, until human kind fully comes to this realization, globaly. The best of luck to you, and i hope I'll have opportunities in the future to attend your lectures. You're very kind. I'm greatful for your lecture. ??”

Big thank you to Tanja Tomic for sending me this amazing feedback the day after my talk!?

It is a brave new world. Everyone is talking about AI and Learning. But are we really understanding where we are and what is to come?

Last Saturday I had the honour of delivering a plenary called Exploring the New Frontiers of ELT at the ELTA Serbia English Language Teacher’s Conference. I confess I was nervous about it beforehand because I really wanted to take a different look at AI; in fact, I wanted to create an honest look at where we come from as language teachers and where we are now - and I mean an honest look at where we are now - and then the deep dive into the future.

The first point in language teaching has to be the point where we, as language teachers did not even exist! Let us be really honest, the traders on the silk road did not spend years of grammar lessons to trade their wares! As Bill VanPatten, 2019, The Nature of Language. ACTFL, p. 5, nicely states:

Before institutionalized education, language rules were non-existent. Pre-literate tribes world-wide learned other languages through contact without such rules. For example, there was contact among Native American tribes in North America long before Europeans come, and some tribal members learned another tribe’s language … Phoenician was widely spoken as a second language in the ancient Mediterranean area, although no formal education system anywhere; there was no such thing as Phoenician 101.”

Then if we journey from the most popular methods over the last half century, we could mention: The Direct Method, Grammar-translation, Audio-lingual, The structural approach, Suggestopedia, Total Physical Response (TPR),The Silent Way, Community Language Learning Immersion, Task-based language , The Natural Approach, The Lexical Syllabus, Communicative language teaching(CLT) (source : Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching Richards, J. and Rodgers, T (1986) CUP Cambridge.).

And all of these are for us to know about and embrace and even have the versatility and flexibility of being able to deliver them all, according to the desires, needs, requirements of our learners!

But where are we now? Now, this year 2024 after being suddenly been bombarded with so much AI since the start of the year? The truth is that there has been so much already over the last years, Such as robots teaching English in Japan since 2018 and the research about it in 2020 concluding:

AI robot can be said to be a new way of teaching English in Japan, although it still needs further proof. Then, it was supported by strong control from Toda City Board of Education …………………….. showing that Robot AI has a good and guaranteed influence for city revitalization through education. ……. Even so, Toda City Board of Education still has to work hard to realize education reform through teacher training, bearing in mind that AI robots have been proven to have strengths and weaknesses.

Althaf Gauhar Auliawan and Susy Ong The Usage of AI Robot in English Language Teaching for City Revitalization Case Study: Toda Daini Elementary School, Toda City, Saitama, Japan 2020?IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth Environ. Sci.?436?012022DOI?10.1088/1755-1315/436/1/012022

Another example, is a company in Australia called Soul machines, which has been working for years on robots with emotional intelligence and emotional neural networks? (https://www.soulmachines.com/ ).

The truth is we cannot change what is happening. We cannot go back, we can only move forward, but the question is how to move forward without being overwhelmed and overtaken by the AI that will here in the very near future.

And the reality of now is that our learners have changed! Children are different and very much in need of much more conceptual and experiential learning. At the same time each and every one of us is suffering from limited attention span and easily distracted minds. Global business means adults need language faster than ever before due to work pressure/competition and if you do not have the language skills then AI will do it for you (actually still with the risks of inaccuracies in translations and cultural misunderstandings abounding. Nor do we fit into the “A1, A2 etc” boxes any more – social media language exposure plus bits and bobs we pick up on the way, mean that we are potentially what I call “eclectic levels” – I certainly have A2 mistakes and C1 brilliance in my eclectic German!

In addition, we are all silently suffering from the fallout of the Pandemic – on Serbia someone said to me in my workshop, it seems to be a Tabu Topic! Doesn’t it just! What is the reason we are not talking about the fallout? The kids that suffered in those years and now have problems to communicate or to socialise. The suicide rate increasing and recorded as the highest recorded in 2022. (data after 2022 not yet available!!) The adults who suffered losing their livelihoods and professions, having to reinvent themselves to a lockdown and world that stopped!

Teachers are key to how we move forward! And moving forward will require embracing technology and complementing it with our only super power ?- our humanness! So the key for teachers is to step up on our humanness and help kiddies, teenagers and adults to learn in this brave new emerging world.

How? Well firstly, by keeping abreast with the new techonnologies. For example, the virtual reality learning, the apps that provide algorithms to help learners to understand their own needs, the interactive platforms that will promote learner autonomy.

Secondly, by learning more and more about our brain, mind, emotions, psychology and being able to share this information with our learners. This is not about teachers becoming neuroscientists, this is about teachers being able to explain by adjusting to the learner, so if I am talking with little kiddies about panic attacks or about overwhelming emotions, I need to do it in “kiddie speak” or if I am with a top executive suffering from anxiety before giving a presentation in English to explain fight or flight and create strategies to help him/her overcome this. (For some research on the impact of sharing about the brain in the classroom for example this research with Carol Dweck Growth Mondset authoress - Blackwell, Lisa & Trzesniewski, Kali & Dweck, Carol. (2007). Implicit Theories of Intelligence Predict Achievement Across an Adolescent Transition: A Longitudinal Study and an Intervention. Child development. 78. 246-63. 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.00995.x.)

Thirdly by totally overhauling our communication patterns and adopting much more brain friendly, compassionate conversations as educators. Unfortunately as educators we have “teacher habits” that we are not fully conscious of and we need to bring in the awareness to change from directive to non-directive: to change from having to know the answers to everything to letting go and provoking our learner to find their own answers: to respect neurodiversity and the fact that every brain is different… (“Like with fingerprints, no two people have the same brain anatomy, a study has shown. This uniqueness is the result of a combination of genetic factors and individual life experiences.”) University of Zurich, July 10, 2018? reported in Science Daily

Becoming a professional skilled coach, embodying compassionate conversations, non-violent communication, non-reactive conversation is going to help defuse the emotionally charged learners to find their own solutions and achieve their own goals. From recent research we can see just how much this impacts even on learner wellbeing!

“First, our results showed that goal-oriented self-regulation behaviors are positively related to psychological well-being through increasing academic performance. This implies that the goal-oriented self-regulation strategy is able to act as an effective way to promote psychological well-being. We thus suggest that universities and educational practitioners develop relevant training programs, workshops, and interventions to cultivate college students to proactively engage in self-regulation behaviors.”

Wang, H., Yang, J. & Li, P. How and when goal-oriented self-regulation improves college students’ well-being: A weekly diary study. Curr Psychol (2021).

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Finally, we live in an era where our humanness is enhanced when we truly learn to follow our hearts and bring the passion and love into everything we do. As more and more research shows us just how important the heart really is, as more messages get sent form the heart to the brain than from the brain to the heart, as educators it is time for us to step up our own empathy, compassion and humanness to inspire and touch the hearts of the generations to come!

“Dr. Armour, in 1991, discovered that the heart has its "little brain" or "intrinsic cardiac nervous system." This "heart brain" is composed of approximately 40,000 neurons that are alike neurons in the brain, meaning that the heart has its own nervous system. In addition, the heart communicates with the brain in many methods: neurologically, biochemically, biophysically, and energetically. The vagus nerve, which is 80% afferent, carries information from the heart and other internal organs to the brain. Signals from the "heart brain" redirect to the medulla, hypothalamus, thalamus, and amygdala and the cerebral cortex. Thus, the heart sends more signals to the brain than vice versa. …………....”

Alshami AM. Pain: Is It All in the Brain or the Heart? Curr Pain Headache Rep. 2019 Nov 14;23(12):88. doi: 10.1007/s11916-019-0827-4. PMID: 31728781.

For more information about the heart, do check out all the research from Heartmath institute? https://www.heartmath.org/

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?#coaching #coachingineducation #languagecoaching #neurolanguagecoaching #neurohearteducation

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