In Conversation: Language Education in the Age of Rapid Technological Change

That has included transitioning what was a fully in-person program into one that is fully online, as long-time chair of the Middlebury Institute’s TESOL/Teaching Foreign Language programs. In 2024, he was nominated and selected for the Faculty Excellence Award. The committee noted his strength at engaging learners to explore their understanding of content, at bridging new content with previous lessons learned, and at establishing a collegial environment in his class. They also admired his ability to practice what he teaches by positioning himself as a learner as well.

We recently caught up with Professor Martel to hear what’s on his mind in this period of rapid transformation.

Where did your love of language learning start? 

In a way, I’m a heritage learner. My dad’s whole side of the family is from Quebec. My grandmother spoke French as a very young kid at home in the United States, but then it was all English once school started, which is what I’ve since learned as a language educator is the worst thing to do. My dad didn’t grow up speaking French, nor did I, but I was always drawn to it. 

Growing up, I loved both French and music. I played viola and went on to study music at Boston University. While there, I remember coaching a string quartet of middle schoolers, and there was one kid struggling to keep up with the group. Then I said one thing that unlocked it for him and he got it. Through both music and French, I learned that I love to teach and see those aha moments.

After undergrad, I got my master’s degree with Middlebury, spending a summer in Vermont at the Language Schools, and then a year in Paris where I could just soak up French language and culture. I then ended up teaching French in middle and high school for five years.

We’re at a time when a lot of young people are questioning whether it’s worth learning a language. What do you think about that right now? 

There’s the cliché aspect of it versus finding your own stake in the game. The cliché is that you unlock all this understanding into different cultures and worldviews—and there’s certainly truth to that. But as a language teacher, if my student has no skin in the game, they’re not going to care. They’ll say, “That’s interesting to you, but it doesn’t really connect with me. So why would I bother?” A student of a language has to have an authentic interest—something they want to explore and can only really come to know through that language. 

Here at the Middlebury Institute, we have students who want to make a mark on the world stage, who want to help with development or peace and say, “I need this language to do that.” That’s why I love teaching here so much. 

Should studying language be required in school? 

I think a lot comes down to how we construe civic participation. We have to look at what we value as a country. If cross-cultural understanding and participation on a global stage, especially in the globalized world, are important for our security, interests, artistic cultivation and well-being, then it should be baked into general education.  

For my PhD, I studied in Minnesota, where there are many dual immersion programs where children are developing their first language and learning a second language in tandem. What if that were just schooling in America? That would be such a gift and so powerful.

Right now, most  American students aren’t getting a lot of language instruction at all, much less high-quality instruction tailored to their interests. What needs to change? 

We need to drop a lot of preconceived notions. That starts with the grammatical syllabus, where we move from verbs, to the articles, present tense, past tense, etc. For the longest time, that’s been the organizing planning paradigm in language instruction. 

The work I’ve done has been on how to reorient language curriculum design around information and ideas that are relevant to students’ lives through content-based instruction. That’s why I came to work here at the Middlebury Institute—a place where content-based instruction is the dominant framework. A more interesting, engaging language curriculum has thoughtful themes, but also leaves a lot of room for student agency, too. They’re not just given a curriculum; they help generate the curriculum. They go find their interest.  

What are you tracking that excites you about where language learning could go? 

I’m very curious to see how language learning will evolve with more online education, especially asynchronous learning and AI-mediated programs. We’ve transitioned our MA in TESOL from a fully in-person program to a fully online asynchronous program. As an educator, I’ve loved learning to teach in this modality. I believe in it and I think it is just as powerful, if not better than, on-site teaching, and the emerging research backs that up.  

However, as a language teacher specifically, I still have questions about how we make it work for all the different types of communication skills we’re developing—interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational.  

I want to underline that we need to be clear on where people need to be strong to thrive in their particular environment. For a diplomat, it may be important that they can converse on the fly. If someone is a programmer working online and everything is done asynchronously via messaging, it may not be a big problem that they aren’t as strong at that. 

Does conversation on Zoom prepare people to use their language skills in the wild? How does texting and messaging fit in? How helpful is it to message with an AI chatbot in the language you’re learning? There’s a lot to experiment with and figure out.

There are widely divergent viewpoints on what should be the role of technology in the classroom. Where do you come down? 

My personal value that I’ve cultivated over time is that I want to use tech where there’s a clear value added—and sometimes lower tech is more effective than high-tech. For instance, I often have my students record themselves teaching. There are some really flashy tools designed exactly for that, but the learning curve is too great. An iPhone video and a Google doc with notes do the trick. 

What about AI? 

Rather than exploring this philosophically, I’m more in the space of “How can this tool make things easier for me and my students?” 

We are all dealing with cognitive exhaustion in this modern world and I am hopeful that some of these tools could help with that. For example, let’s say I want to make beans in my Instant Pot. You type that into a web browser, you’re going to get a million sites and you have to scroll through a million ads to get to the information. It just drains you cognitively, while ChatGPT will just give you a straightforward answer. 

With my students, we’re looking at how they can use AI for designing rubrics or class activities, as well as how they can use it when searching and applying for jobs. 

Where are some areas you’re hoping to explore in your work? 

I’m very interested in flexible program design. At the Institute, our hallmark has been master’s degrees, but that might not always be what the student of the future is seeking. How can we capture a broader array of learners at different stages of their lives and with different interests and a different willingness to invest? I’m excited about the suite of microcredentials we recently launched in TESOL, international education management, and intercultural competence with this goal of expanded access in mind. 

I’m also interested in looking at specifically how language teacher educators are preparing their students for a multimodal future. We aren’t all just teaching and learning in a traditional classroom. You may be teaching online, hybrid, asynchronous or with a bit of synchronicity involved. 

Any final thoughts? 

I am glad to have found meditation as a way of getting comfortable with life coming at me. For better or for worse, teaching these days is a field where we have to be really prepared for change.