Magazin Sprache

“Too complicated”, “too much lost time” or “I don’t have any control over what my pupils are doing there” – this is how some teachers spontaneously react to the idea of using task-based language learning in a digital context.

AI technology is now omnipresent and it’s hard to imagine teaching a foreign language these days without it. Here’s a look at the emerging field of natural language processing and potential uses (and abuses) of AI tools in language courses.

Prof Dr. Torben Schmidt is an important voice in the field of digital foreign language learning. In an interview with Dr. Moritz Dittmeyer, he discusses the potential and the challenges of AI technologies in foreign language learning.

(Foreign) languages open up new worlds to us, but we generally feel most at home in our mother tongue. And yet, as Professor Thorsten Piske at Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen and Nuremburg explains in an interview, our native language isn’t always the language we speak best.

German learners want and should have contact with people and ways of life in German-speaking countries and regions (DACH). Learners all over the world can do that virtually now over the Internet, as well as getting a good look inside other cultures. Here are some practical suggestions on the use of digital media for cultural learning.

Moin, Servus or Grüezi (“hello!” in North Germany, Bavaria/Austria, and German-speaking Switzerland respectively)? Möhre, Karotte or Rüebli (regional words for “carrot”)? Is it die or das Mail (“email”)? All these words and forms are correct. And they are expressions of how varied the German-speaking world is, both linguistically and culturally – a reality that ought to be reflected in German teaching. But how to go about it?