The Implications and Applications of Large Language Models for Self-Access Language Learning
by Professor Andy Curtis
As a result of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, many hundreds of millions of students and teachers had to move their classes – typically with very little time and limited institutional support (if any) – from being physically in-person and in bricks-and-mortar classrooms to everything-online, all-the-time, with no possibility of blended learning. However, in spite of the institutional, income-driven mishandling of that move (Curtis, 2023) many useful lessons are emerging regarding independent, self-directed, online education, including foreign language teaching and learning. Then, just as many countries were coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, at the end of 2022, the OpenAI corporation released the first publicly available version of the software application, ChatGPT, which garnered 100 million users within its first two months, making it the fastest growing consumer app in history. In this talk, we will, then, look at the implications and applications of such apps for independent, self-directed foreign language learning.
Date: 18 December 2023 (Monday)
Time: 4:00 to 5:00 PM
Venue: Zoom
