ChatGPT is a weird linguist: What should language teachers know about how LLMs work?

Large Language Models (LLMs) are not superintelligent beings but they are superpolyglots. Their ability to interact in almost any language at a level of high proficiency was one of the biggest revelations. But this should not be a surprise - transformers, the technology behind LLMs, was invented in 2017 by Google researchers to improve machine translation. So it was more of a surprise that they can do all the things that are not language-related. But as polyglottic as they are, LLMs are very strange linguists. The way they were trained and the way they generate output are very different from how humans learn and use language. And this has consequences that are easy to overlook when we stay on the surface. Many of these strange properties are only revealed when we try to have LLMs do the sort of things language teachers do: Give examples in another language according to specified criteria, correct and explain grammar, or a have an interaction at the level of a beginner. Superficially it looks that LLMs are really good at these tasks but they often struggle to be consistent in subtle and unpredictable ways. This talk will cover how LLMs work, how they were trained and what are the consequences for their use in the language classroom. It will focus on the strengths and weaknesses of LLMs when it comes to languages and possible mitigations through task design and prompt crafting.
Dominik Lukeš is the Assistive Technology Officer at the University of Oxford where he started and manages the Reading and Writing Innovation Lab, assessing devices and apps for academic content.
He conducts AI workshops and contributes to key reports like "Beyond ChatGPT: The State of Generative AI in Academic Practice (Autumn 2023)" and "Transforming Higher Education: Harnessing AI in Teaching and Assessment." He maintains a LinkedIn newsletter on AI in Academic Practice and has spoken on AI at international conferences.
Dominik serves on advisory boards for MacGraw Hill and Bett UK.
Before focusing on educational technologies, Dominik was a long-time teacher of Czech as a foreign language and is an author of a textbook and grammar book of Czech for non-native speakers. He also taught English as a foreign language and run TEFL training workshops in 16 countries.
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