Klaus Waschik, Director of the Landesspracheninstitut (LSI) at the Ruhr University Bochum (Germany), gave an open lecture at VSU on the topic “Foreign languages 4.0. Methodological and technological challenges in the context of personalization and artificial intelligence”.
Lecturers and students of the Vologda State University attended the lecture of the German professor.
Here are some excerpts from Dr. Waschik’s speech.
- If we teach students a foreign language “at gunpoint”, we can be sure that students are learning. But with what result? Does university or school knowledge of a foreign language correspond to the trends that exist in society?
- English is sufficient for general communication. But if you want to understand the mentality, way of thinking, for example, of the Chinese people, you need to learn the language of China.
- In society, there is a decreasing willingness to study a foreign language for a long time. The society is moving towards individualization of learning using digital tools and technologies for remote language learning.
- Self-learning and the ability to teach oneself are important now. In this regard, many educational electronic platforms have emerged.
- Soon students will not care where they geographically are. Teachers should be prepared for the fact that attending classes will fall into oblivion.
Klaus Waschik presented the LSI.online platform, which is currently used in the process of teaching Arabic, Chinese, German, Japanese, Korean, and Russian.
The educational platform includes a variety of interactive exercises, an individual vocabulary simulator, and online support for a tutor. The platform is used for full-time and distance learning programs at the Landesspracheninstitut (LSI) at the Ruhr University Bochum (Germany), as well as in universities in Germany, Russia, Austria and Japan. Now 900 students have access to this platform.