Professor George X Zhang. Image: SuppliedArtificial Intelligence (AI) will impact almost every aspect of learning and teaching foreign languages at university level. This is the view of a leading Chinese academic who recently delivered a lecture at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) entitled “University Foreign Language Learning and Teaching in the Era of Artificial Intelligence”.
Professor George X Zhang, from Richmond American University in the UK, delivered a guest lecture at UWC’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities. The lecture was hosted by the faculty in collaboration with the University’s Department of Foreign Languages and the Confucius Institute. The Department of Foreign Languages will from 2026 assume a new identity as the Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures.
Introducing the speaker, the Dean of the Faculty, Professor Fiona Moolla, said language is at the heart of the arts and humanities and the world is a multilingual one. She said the faculty strongly supports the cultural access and diversity that African and world languages encourage, without losing the connections permitted by English.
“Through the Confucius Institute, we also have a door that opens to Chinese language and culture, a door that Prof Zhang will open a bit wider today,” said Prof Moolla.
Prof Zhang told a packed audience of staff, undergraduate and postgraduate students he was honoured to address the UWC community. Professor Zhang, a seasoned teacher trainer, firmly believes that effective language instruction hinges on a genuine interest in the language being taught.
“It’s the learning experience that will make you understand a bit more about your limits, and what language is about - about all the differences, about all the kinds of things that language practitioners want to do in the classroom or in their research,” said Prof Zhang.
He said empathy is needed during teaching and learning of a language, and that this can only be achieved once empathy is understood in its full capacity by those who teach foreign languages.
He said there was a demand among graduates to learn Mandarin when he moved to the UK after teaching English in China. “So, I turned the coin around, so I tried to, basically, find out how English speakers learn Chinese,” said Prof Zhang.
Professor Zhang noted a significant decline in Chinese students pursuing English language studies, including a reduction in universities offering English courses. This trend is largely attributed to advancements in AI technology, particularly the development of nearly instantaneous translation devices.
He said that while he still teaches, most of his research has involved language teaching, especially in competence and framework, because there is no other yardstick to measure how well teachers learn.
Professor Zhang emphasised the growing importance of liberal arts education in language instruction, particularly in the context of AI.
“Whilst you train people for a special area, you cannot forget, ultimately, that we are training the future leaders for the future generations in a multilingual and pro-lingual environment,” said Prof Zhang.
Prof Tawffeek Mohammed, Chairperson of the Department of Foreign Languages, delivered the concluding remarks and a vote of thanks. He described the lecture as “truly thought-provoking,” and expressed appreciation to Professor Zhang for offering valuable insights into the evolving relationship between language, learning, and technology. Prof. Mohammed highlighted the importance of human creativity in guiding innovation in education, emphasising that technology has always been integral to language teaching and learning.
Reflecting on the historical development of educational tools, he observed how the advent of the internet brought about waves of innovative technologies, from early desktop applications like Hot Potatoes, TextToys, and Markin to the Web 1.0 and 2.0 periods characterised by gamification and SCORM-compliant authoring tools. “Today,” he added, “AI and large language models are achieving what once seemed miraculous, and they have been readily embraced within our field.”
