It's been a busy start to 2026, so I was really excited to sit down and spend some focused time on catching up with academic research and reading. One of the things I read this week was "AI Ethics: Policy Guidance for Language Education", authored and shared by TIRF - The International Research Foundation for English Language Education on LinkedIn just the other day. There is a clear need for practical frameworks for ethical AI use in language learning and teaching, and this guidance paper delivers on that front, to some extent, with concrete examples and excerpts from policies various institutions are using. For example, I found the excerpt from British Council rather useful. The section on citing AI sources is also excellent, and the discussion on plagiarism and detection is reasonably comprehensive. Those of us who remember Chomsky will appreciate a quote from him that includes the word “plagiarism”.
Despite the title, though, I feel this paper isn't really about language education specifically. It reads more like general guidance with a slim section on language skills that sticks to traditional skills. If you're looking for insights on how AI use and AI policies impact English language acquisition, intercultural communication, ESL writing instruction, or pronunciation practice (among other English language education topics), you may be disappointed.
Most references are from 2023 and 2024, with only three from 2025. In AI, that seems like an eternity. A lot must have changed in the past year, and that doesn't seem to be reflected here. AI literacy for teachers gets mentioned a few times (questions on p. 8, more on p. 24) but never gets the focused treatment it deserves. Given that AI literacy is foundational to everything else, this feels like a missed opportunity.
Overall, it's a useful starting point for institutional policy discussions, but language educators will need to look elsewhere for discipline-specific practical guidance.
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A case study exploring AI and its impact on professional communication
Chigaeva-Heddad, S.I. (2025). Artificial Intelligence and its impact on professional communication: A case study. In Linguistics, Language Teaching, and Translation Studies: Current Issues and Research Perspectives (pp. 157-165). Chuvash State University, Cheboksary, Russia.