As AI reshapes the technological landscape, students across all disciplines need opportunities to build 21st‑century skills, including AI literacy. Foreign language courses, which already foster communicative and intercultural competence, are uniquely positioned to support these skills. This poster explores whether AI‑mediated language practice can simultaneously strengthen students’ linguistic abilities and their understanding of AI tools.
This session presents an activity from a beginner‑level Spanish course in which students interacted with an AI chatbot configured to act as a conversational partner named Alberto. Using a carefully designed prompt, students engaged in exchanging personal information, preferences, and emotional states while practicing targeted vocabulary and grammatical structures. The chatbot provided metalinguistic feedback, highlighted errors, encouraged self‑repair, and offered explanations and new vocabulary as needed.
The poster also reports findings from a mixed‑methods study examining student perspectives and experiences with AI tools in the language classroom. Survey data and analysis of AI–student interactions indicate that learners recognize the linguistic benefits of AI‑mediated practice and generally support its integration into both their college experience and language study. At the same time, they acknowledge important concerns about accuracy, privacy, and the role of AI in learning. These insights offer guidance for instructors seeking to incorporate AI responsibly and effectively in foreign‑language pedagogy.
