Language Educators’ Relationship with AI: The Quantitative Study of How teachers Might Use and Perceive AI in their Profession

The advent of Artificial Intelligence seems to make a revolution in many fields including language education. Although the technology in its generative form (Generative Artificial Intelligence) is new, many researchers have started examining its effects on language education. While researchers pointed out the potential of this technology for improving teaching and learning languages, challenges and repercussions have also been noticed in the literature. This research aims to find for what purposes language teachers might use AI tools, what challenges they might encounter and how they perceive AI tools in general. 42 language teachers with different backgrounds from various countries participated in the study. A questionnaire comprising 24 multiple-choice questions and one open-ended question was filled by the participants, and the data was analyzed in two ways. First, the descriptive analysis demonstrated the percentage of each answer for each question. Second, using Spearman rank order correlation analysis, the possible correlations between answers to different questions were studied. Results indicate that AI tools are mostly used for creating learning material and lesson plans compared to receiving feedback for oral and written productions. While AI literacy, lack of regulations, bias and accessibility were the most challenging concerns respectively, most participants showed a positive reaction towards the trend of accommodating this technology highlighting its potential in boosting learner autonomy. The results also indicate a negative correlation between years of teaching experience and level of satisfaction in using AI tools. While more studies are required to provide a more comprehensive understanding, the global paradigm of incorporating AI into work seems to have changed the language educators’ approach to using a non-human agent for education.