An invited lecture for the series on Artificial Intelligence in Language Education
Rick Kern
Professor and Chair, French Department
University of California, Berkeley
2:30-3:30 pm central, Friday, September 20, 2024
On Zoom
About the talk
Based on Kern’s recent position paper on Generative Artificial Intelligence in the Modern Language Journal (108/2, Summer 2024, open access), this talk will argue that Generative AI has shifted the ground upon which we have based much of our language teaching (and our role as teachers) for centuries, and that we must imperatively (re-)articulate our goals, without making those goals subservient to the affordances of our technological tools. It will include discussion and demonstration of a few ideas on how AI technology might be incorporated in productive ways in language classrooms, with a discovery approach to pedagogy.
About the speaker
Rick Kern is Professor of French and Chair of the French Department at the University of California at Berkeley. Previously he served for 16 years as Director of the Berkeley Language Center. He teaches courses in French linguistics, language, and foreign language pedagogy, and supervises graduate teaching assistants. His research interests include language acquisition, literacy, and relationships between language and technology. Professor Kern’s most recent book is Screens and Scenes: Multimodal Communication in Online Intercultural Encounters (Routledge, 2018), co-edited with Christine Develotte, and in 2015 he published Language, Literacy, and Technology (Cambridge UP). Earlier books include Literacy and Language Teaching (Oxford UP) and Network-Based Language Teaching (Cambridge UP), co-edited with Mark Warschauer.
Co-Sponsors: University of Wisconsin-Madison Language Institute and Center for Teaching and Research on Writing
Contact: Dianna Murphy, Language Institute
The UW-Madison Language Institute is committed to inclusive and accessible programming. To request an accommodation for this event, please contact Language Institute associate director Jana Martin three business days in advance.