My Experience as Guest Lecturer at Jilin International Studies University

This semester, I was invited as guest lecturer in the course Interpretacion Simultanea for students of the Master’s program in Spanish interpretation at Jilin International Studies University.

Participants of the online class, Photo courtesy of the author

In the course, I talked about such topics as innovation, artificial intelligence, as well as new teaching methods through technology in linguistics.

Together with my friends Weixin Zhao (China) and Can Lyu (China), who are professionals in linguistics, we prepared information about these topics. In our materials, we mentioned the trends and the impact of artificial intelligence on languages. We also talked about how it relates to higher education, since artificial intelligence can make classes more dynamic and more entertaining for students, taking a step forward from traditional teaching methods.

During the classes, the students commented a lot on how quickly artificial intelligence is advancing in all professional fields in China. They also spoke of the importance of soft skills for students, since innovation is happening not only technology- but also mentality-wise, allowing both students and teachers to be more flexible in regard to changes in education.

In our classes, we led discussions about how artificial intelligence should be used to support students because it will help them produce greater analysis and interpretation of learning materials, simplifying tasks for both the teacher and the student. We also mentioned that we should take this opportunity for AI to make our activities faster, as now the most important thing is not only the educational content, but how we present it to students, which means the personal will influence the professional.

I would like to thank Professor Mo Zhao, Yadong Wang, and Yuan Xue, as well as my Faculty of Technological Management and Innovations at ITMO for their support.