Keynote

Biography

Jean-Marc Dewaele is Professor of Applied Linguistics and Multilingualism. He has published widely on individual differences in classroom emotions.

He is former president of the International Association of Multilingualism and the European Second Language Association, and current president of the International Association for the Psychology of Language Learning.

He is General Editor of Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. He won the Equality and Diversity Research Award from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (2013), the Robert Gardner Award for Excellence in Second Language and Bilingualism Research (2016) from the International Association of Language and Social Psychology and the EUROSLA Distinguished Scholar Award (2022). 

Abstract

I will talk about an emerging area of research in the field of foreign language learning, which was triggered by the introduction of Positive Psychology (Dewaele et al., 2019).

It has focused on the role of emotions in foreign language learning and their effect on performance, beyond the traditional focus on foreign language anxiety and includes new concepts such as foreign language enjoyment and flow (Botes et al., 2022; Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014, 2022).

Recent studies showed that teacher emotions and behaviour in the FL class shape learners’ enjoyment, anxiety and motivation (Dewaele, Saito & Halimi, 2022a, b). 

Biography

Prof. Dr. Doris Weßels is Professor of Business Informatics with a focus on Project Management and Natural Language Processing at Kiel University of Applied Sciences. After studying mathematics, business administration and computer science at the University of Münster, she completed her doctorate at the Institute for Finance and Investment at the University of Oldenburg.

Over the following 12 years, she worked in various specialist and leading positions in the mechanical and plant engineering, telecommunications and banking sectors. Since 2018, her AI research focus has been on developments in the subject of Natural Language Processing (NLP). She leads the research group “AI and Academic Writing” in the AI-ExpertLab  of the BMBF-funded pilot project AI-Campus.

Abstract

The age of artificial intelligence (AI) is creating different framework conditions for dealing with language, starting with speaking in itself through to the manifold forms of text production.

The talk will provide several insights into the current state of development of generative AI language models which are classified as “Natural Language Processing” (NLP). The high availability and increasing capacity of AI-assisted tools and computational linguistic algorithms already impressively reflect the fact that AI language models are a technology of the future which offer an introduction to a multimodal world with undreamt-of (new) possibilities.

The resulting opportunities and risks of using this technology are explored particularly in relation to universities and teachers. The issue is whether this technology is to be seen as a curse or a blessing for language teaching practice at universities.