ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE TEACHING AND LEARNING OF FRENCH LANGUAGE AT TASUED: A BLESSING OR A CURSE

Abstract

There is no gainsaying in the fact that the world is gradually becoming a global village by leveraging the use of information and communication technology (ICT), machine translation (MT) or also artificial intelligence (AI) in the teaching and learning of French as a foreign language (FFL). French language learning has been in existence for almost two decades at the Tai Solarin University of Education (TASUED) as language facilitators have been making use of one e-learning platform or the other to foster the teaching of this target language. In this presentation, the researchers evaluate the effectiveness in the incorporation of AI in the teaching and learning of French whether it enhances the academic performance of the learners or it constitutes an impediment towards the growth and development in the acquisition of the target language. Gemini AI chatbot which is a subset of artificial intelligence will be used as methodology to examine the accuracy of some English expressions into French both written and oral expressions. Selinker’s interlanguage theory will aid the interpretation of the results emanating from the machine translation to verify whether it will be beneficial to learners or prevent them from attaining proficiency in the target language. Efforts will be made to proffer some recommendations towards the pragmatic usage of the new technology in a French classroom settings.