AI implications for vocational foreign language teaching and learning: new meaning

Abstract

Importance. AI rapidly and dramatically transforms reality, which poses a problem for the new generation of university graduates coming into profession. Social sciences and humanities majors are concerned about the future of their careers and uncertain of professional skills in demand. This perspective piece argues in favor of shifting to interdisciplinary approach in higher education, with emphasis on integrative content embracing special knowledge, foreign language contexts and pertinent AI-mediated settings. The underlying idea is that in educational contexts, AI cannot only focus on procedural aspects – teaching techniques and management tasks; it is essential to provide language learners with a new professional scope of reference, which means changed curriculums, revised content, and new professions.Research Methods. The work relies on various qualitative methods of research: analysis of present day labour market in AI-mediated contexts of social sciences and humanities; analysis of literature covering the use of AI for foreign language teaching and learning; a descriptive and analytical method; methods of generalizing and systematizing the selected material; interpretive analysis. The materials include scientific works of Russian and foreign scientists and modern labor market data.Results and Discussion. Labour market analysis makes it possible to discover skills essential to a new generation of specialists in social sciences and humanities. In this respect, arguments for updating the content of teaching the majors in question are provided, and a discipline with adequate integrative potential is named. The interdisciplinary approach is illustrated with AI-mediated foreign language contexts of social sciences and humanities as part of the updated integrative content of the discipline “Foreign Language” to be mastered by students.Conclusion. The conducted research brings us to the idea that the discipline “Foreign Language” has a unique potential for preparing a new generation of graduates in social sciences and humanities underpinned by AI. Along with its traditional goal – developing a person’s communicative competence, essential in digital settings, it has good prospects of integrating special subject knowledge and its language correlates, necessary for the effective operation of AI algorithms in such areas, as well as for developing the “linguo-cognitive dimension” of professional activity adequate to these conditions.