Today I’m talking to Samantha Curle from the University of Bath about her recent article, Generative AI and the future of writing for publication: insights from applied linguistics journal editors.

The peer review process is under increasing strain. With the explosion of submissions to academic journals since ChatGPT became available to all, editorial boards are struggling to keep pace. Peer reviewers are in short supply, and this has prompted (pardon the pun) an increased use of AI in the review process itself, leading to concerns that some articles may be making it to print without having been subjected to the appropriate level of scrutiny.

Samantha and I dig into the data from her study of journal editors and discuss the cracks that are appearing in the system. We also talk about pressure to publish, questionable research practices, the replication crisis, opaque data sets, the future of publishing and more. Samantha also offers advice to teacher researchers looking to publish, and her plans for future projects.

Guest bio Samantha Curle is a Reader in Applied Linguistics at the University of Bath & Adjunct Professor at Khazar University, Azerbaijan. She is Co-founder of the Cambridge ReachSci Mini-PhD on Multilingual Education & a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy & the Royal Society of Arts. She read for her DPhil in Education (Applied Linguistics) at the University of Oxford, having previously read for two MSc degrees there. Her research focuses on English Medium Instruction (EMI) in higher education, examining factors that influence academic achievement, such as English proficiency & psychological constructs. Her research spans across four continents (Africa, Asia, Europe, South America) and she has published in journals such as Language Teaching & Journal of Engineering Education.

References Moorhouse, B., Consoli, S. and Curle, S. (2025). Generative AI and the future of writing for publication: insights from applied linguistics journal editors. Applied Linguistics Review. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2025-0021

Samantha’s Research Gate profile https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Samantha-Curle Follow Samantha on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/samanthacurle/

Further reading Hinz, A. (2025). Navigating Generative AI in Academic Publishing: An Interview With Benjamin Luke Moorhouse. De Gruyter Conversations. Available at: https://blog.degruyter.com/navigating-generative-ai-in-academic-publishing-an-interview-with-benjamin-luke-moorhouse/

Gibney, E. (2025) Scientists hide messages in papers to game AI peer review. Nature. Available at:doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-02172-y

Kurzgesagt - In a nutshell. (2025). AI Slop is destroying the internet. [Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfN9wnPvU0 [Accessed 16th October 2025].

Simons, J. (2024) Harvard’s Gino Report Reveals How A Dataset Was Altered. Data Colada. Available at: https://datacolada.org/118 [Accessed 11th August 2025]

Timecodes 00:00 Introduction 01:49 Samantha Curle 06:22 The spike in submissions 11:05 Why the peer review process was already struggling 13:09 AI generated reviews 15:50 The importance of rigorous peer review 24:31 Rethinking the process 29:03 Questionable research practices 34:05 What has changed in the wake of the replication crisis? 35:34 The difficulty of accessing data sets 40:35 Who can instigate change? 44:07 Advice for teachers looking to publish 48:39 Samantha’s future projects

Many of the skills and language conventions that we see in academia can serve as barriers to students, especially to those for whom English is not a first language. Translanguaging argues for a more inclusive approach to these conventions, and looks for ways in which we can take a more pluralistic view of what kinds of communication are seen as acceptable.

Kelly Webb-Davies joins us to talk through some of the core tenets of translanguaging, how it can help students and the role of technology in levelling the playing field. We also discuss some of the practicalities around translanguaging’s implementation in the classroom, recent developments in assessments, authorship and intelligibility, and a whole lot more.

Kelly delivered a webinar for TELSIG last year that also offers a clear and comprehensive introduction to translanguaging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-600GB8w-WQ

Kelly Webb-Davies is a Lead Business Technologist at the Centre and her academic background is in linguistics, with degrees from the University of Western Australia and the University of Melbourne. Before joining Oxford, she lectured on phonetics and phonology at the University of Bangor and was a Trinity DipTESOL-qualified English for Academic Purposes tutor and Technology Enhanced Learning and Language Lead at Bangor University International College, where working with international students and responding to their specific needs informed her practice of integrating AI productively to assist with their academic and linguistic proficiency.

Her focus is thoughtfully integrating AI into higher education in ways that enhance communication, reduce bias, and expand access to knowledge. She is particularly interested in how AI can be used to address the unique challenges of groups facing linguistic barriers and neurodivergence, creating more inclusive and accessible educational environments. She advocates for a balanced approach that maintains human involvement and fosters critical thinking alongside AI implementation and her work explores innovative ways to incorporate this philosophy into pedagogical and assessment design, ensuring that AI tools complement and enrich education.

Deanne Cobb-Zygadlo has been an EAP tutor at Nazarbayev University since 2015. She is the co-coordinator of the Technology-Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group (TELSIG) with BALEAP, which is the accreditation organization for the NU Foundation Year Program. She is also a member of the ENAI (European Network for Academic Integrity) Policies Working Group.

Lee, J.W., (2016) Beyond Translingual Writing. College English. Available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/44805916

Jacob, S., Tate, T., and Warschauer, M., (2025). Emergent AI-assisted discourse: a case study of a second language writer authoring with ChatGPT. De Gruyter Brill. Available at: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/jccall-2024-0011/html

Tan, S. (2024) Translanguaging in second language writing processes. Linguistics and Education. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0898589824000664?via%3Dihub

Wei, L. (2022). Translanguaging as a political stance: implications for English language education. ELT Journal. Available at: https://academic.oup.com/eltj/article/76/2/172/6483197

Zhou, S., Zhao, S., Groves, M. (2022). Towards a digital bilingualism? Students’ use of machine translation in international higher education. Journal of English for Academic Purposes. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1475158522001138?via=ihub

00:00 Deanne takes over 01:46 Kelly Webb-Davies 03:11 What is translanguaging? 05:11 Breaking into academic English 08:11 Disrupting the hegemony 13:30 The origins of translanguaging and overlap with World Englishes 17:33 The art of simple communication 21:16 Judith Butler’s use of academese 27:00 Is translaguaging too woke? 32:20 Writing isn’t always thinking 35:45 Shifting the responsibility from the speaker to the listener 40:25 Increasing variety in assessment 48:00 Is it fair to ask students to deal with non-standard language? 54:01 Applying inclusivity to journal submission guidelines

This is the last in a three-part series exploring responses from the EAP community following three years of Chat GPT induced mayhem. We talk through adaptations in the classroom, transferability and AI skills in the workplace, how to prepare students for higher education, the lack of consistency both within and among universities, reducing students’ reliance on gen AI, the dangers of confirmation bias, the need for change, the future of assessment, and other topics.

Contributing to this conversation is Jim Merry from Nottingham Ningbo University in China and Dr Vic Wilson-Crane from Kaplan. Jim is at the EAP coal face working to adapt his teaching and course design to the realities of student gen AI use, while Vic’s role in the Centre for Learning Innovation and Quality has given her a bird's eye view of institutional responses from across higher education.

We also manage to get Deanne Cobb-Zygadlo's mic and echo cancellation working to get her view of the response from Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan. Are clear policies and declarations of use enough, or are more far-reaching changes needed for EAP and higher education to stay ahead of the curve?

Jim Merry is an EAP tutor at University of Nottingham Ningbo China. He has worked in EAP and test preparation for over twenty years. Jim is interested in syllabus design, and is currently trying to navigate how to integrate AI more meaningfully into his work.

Dr Victoria Wilson-Crane has worked in education, in a variety of settings, for over 25 years. Vic has worked for Kaplan, one of the world’s largest global educators, for eighteen years. She leads Kaplan International Pathways’ Centre for Learning Innovation and Quality, a team of educational experts and developers, responsible for directing quality assurance and innovative learning and assessment in the Kaplan Pathways colleges in the UK. Vic has a particular interest in employability: her doctoral studies explored transition from school to further education and employment. A keen lifelong learner herself, she is a Senior Fellow of the Staff and Educational Development Association and a Certified Member of the Association for Learning Technology.

Deanne Cobb-Zygadlo has been an EAP tutor at Nazarbayev University since 2015. She is the co-coordinator of the Technology-Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group (TELSIG) with BALEAP, which is the accreditation organization for the NU Foundation Year Program. She is also a member of the ENAI (European Network for Academic Integrity) Policies Working Group.

00:00 Intro to Vic Wilson-Crane

06:38 Changes brought about since COVID

07:11 Intro to Jim Merry

10:30 Intro to Deanne Cobb-Zygadlo

13:00 Educating students about the risk of AI dependency

17:55 difficulties in merging AI literacies with EAP

19:25 Developing transferable AI skills

22:10 The kindness curriculum

22:33 What do we lose when we modernise academic skills?

26:25 Student awareness of AI limitations

27:27 What do employers want?

33:26 Gen AI tells us what we want to hear.

35:45 The future of assessment

In part two of ‘are we still language teachers?’ I’m joined in the studio by Thuy Thai and Charles Lam from the University of Leeds. Thuy and Charles argue for the continued relevance of language proficiency in education and in the role of EAP. We also examine the broadening scope of ‘academic skills’ that has come to include AI literacy, and raising awareness among students about things like overreliance and ethical use.

We discuss Thuy’s research into green traffic lights, and give thoughts on the precedents and pitfalls of cognitive offloading, revisiting territory from earlier episodes with Danny Liu and Michael Gerlich. Thuy and Charles also give their take on the findings of the notorious MIT study.

Thuy Thai is a lecturer in English for Academic Purposes at the Language Centre, School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of Leeds. She has a background in academic language instruction, test and assessment development and student support. She previously worked at Leeds Trinity University as a student achievement adviser, where she supported diverse student cohorts in navigating academic challenges and developing effective study strategies. Earlier in her career, she served as a test development researcher at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University-Hanoi. Alongside her research role, she also developed and taught EAP courses, helping students gain the academic language needed for success in Vietnam’s higher education.

Charles Lam is a Lecturer in English for Academic Purposes in the Language Centre, School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at University of Leeds. He graduated at Purdue University in the US. Prior to joining Leeds, he taught linguistics and EAP for several years in Hong Kong. His teaching interests lie in academic communications in STEM. Currently he co-leads Academic Literacies for Biological Sciences and Language for Engineering. His research includes corpus linguistics and digital humanities.

Kosmyna, N., Hauptmann, E., Yuan, Y. T., Situ, J., Liao, X. H., Beresnitzky, A. V., and Maes, P. (2025). Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task. arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.08872.

Today I’m in conversation with Paul Breen, Senior Digital Learning Developer at UCL to get his take on how EAP and ‘hub’ disciplines should be adapting in the wake of AI. We often hear about the need to ‘embrace’ AI, so we try to unpack what this actually means.

EAP practitioners and learning developers are often looked at as the ones to help students navigate the demands and conventions of academia, so who better than to set students straight on what constitutes appropriate use, what a purple traffic light means on an assignment brief and the myriad capabilities and limitations of Chat GPT. But how many EAP teachers feel qualified to deal with these issues? Paul and I talk about this and a range of other topics, such as how EAP teachers from the past would react to today’s EAP, the need for language proficiency, translanguaging, the relevance of certification, and more.

Paul Breen is Senior Digital Learning Developer and Lecturer in EAP at UCL Centre for Languages and International Education. His research interests are in educational technology, language and identity and social justice. He is the author of Developing Educators in the Digital Age.

Further reading

Breen, P. (2018). Developing Educators for the Digital Age: A Framework for Capturing Knowledge in Action. London: University of Westminster Press.

Today I'm talking with Danny Liu about assessment in the age of AI. So far, the idea of a 'traffic light' approach to assessment has been gaining traction in higher education in response to the widespread availability of generative AI. Using the traffic light metaphor, assignments are colour coded according to the level of AI use deemed to be permissible. However, as these systems rely solely on student self report on the level of AI use, Danny argues that there is a danger that they lose their value as valid assessment tools.

Danny talks us through the two-lane approach to assessment that has been adopted at the University of Sydney, distinguishing between 'Lane One' supervised assessments aimed at measuring student capability and 'Lane Two' assessments that encourage learning and engagement with AI. We talk through the process of making structural assessment changes, responses from academics, retaining student engagement, and a range of other topics.

Danny is a molecular biologist by training, programmer by night, researcher and faculty developer by day, and educator at heart. A multiple international and national teaching award winner, he works at the confluence of artificial intelligence, student engagement, and educational technology. A Professor of Educational Technologies at the University of Sydney, he co-chairs the University's AI in Education working group, and leads the Cogniti.ai initiative that puts educators in the driver's seat of AI.

Find Danny on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannydotliu/ and check out the University of Sydney’s AI for Educators resource page at https://canvas.sydney.edu.au/courses/63765

Corbin, T., Dawson, P. and Liu, D. (2025). Talk is cheap: why structural assessment changes are needed for a time of GenAI. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, pp. 1–11. Available at: doi: 10.1080/02602938.2025.2503964.

Liu, D. (2025). A "two lane" approach to assessment in the age of AI: Balancing integrity with relevance. Digitally Enhanced Education Webinars. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf8-b1H3qOU [accessed 16th May 2025]

Liu, D., and A. Bridgeman. (2023). 'What to Do about Assessments If we Can’t out-Design or out-Run AI? Teaching@Sydney. Available at: https://educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au/teaching%40sydney/what-to-do-about-assessments-if-we-cant-out-design-or-out-run-ai/

Today I’m talking to Michael Gerlich about his recent study on the potential effects of AI on critical thinking. While much ink has been spilled discussing the value of the traditional essay in a post GPT landscape, much of the conversation has focused on assessment and questions of authorship. Perhaps unsurprisingly, less time has been given to the impact on the learning process itself. The phrase ‘I write to know what I think’ alludes to the value of putting one’s ideas under the microscope, and of sometimes having to rethink cherished beliefs as we spell them out to ourselves at sentence level. If we outsource this process to ChatGPT, are we losing something valuable? We talk through Michael’s data, his own interpretations, and continue the conversation on whether generative AI is ‘just another tool’, or something more.

Guest bio

Prof. Dr Michael Gerlich is Professor of Management and Head of Centre for Strategic Corporate Foresight and Sustainability at SBS Swiss Business School, a Swiss University of Applied Sciences Institute. His academic and professional work focuses on the societal implications of artificial intelligence, change management, and strategic foresight, with a particular interest in bridging research and practice in both policy and business settings.

With prior experience in government advisory and leadership roles across Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East, he has supported a range of public and private institutions in matters related to economic development, export strategy, and organisational transformation. His research on artificial intelligence has addressed topics such as cognitive offloading, critical thinking, and the ethical dimensions of technology in education and society. His work has been mentioned globally by media including Forbes, Financial Times, The Economist and many more.

Prof. Gerlich has contributed to academic and public debates through his writing and through speaking engagements at international conferences, including events hosted by the United Nations. He holds full, visiting and affiliated teaching roles in Zurich, London (LSE), and Cambridge (ARU), and remains actively involved in interdisciplinary work at the intersection of technology, sociology and human behaviour.

Further reading

Bunn, P.D. (2025). The AI Crisis in Higher Education: Or, on the importance of doing things badly. Everything was beautiful. https://everythingwasbeautiful.substack.com/p/the-ai-crisis-in-higher-education?utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true

Gerlich, M. (2025). AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking. Societies, 15(1), 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc15010006

Lee H.P, Sarkar A, Tankelevitch L, Drosos I, Rintel S, Banks R, Wilson N. (2025). The impact of generative AI on critical thinking: Self-reported reductions in cognitive effort and confidence effects from a survey of knowledge workers. Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/lee_2025_ai_critical_thinking_survey.pdf

In this episode of TELSIG does SoTL, we are joined by Jane Pritchard to discuss the evolving landscape of scholarly teaching. Jane describes her transition from a material scientist to an educational developer at the University of Glasgow, emphasizing the importance of evidence-based educational enhancement. We go on to cover the historical development of SoTL since the early '90s, the role of interdisciplinary collaboration, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on teaching practices, the intricacies of assessment and inclusivity in higher education, and the importance of challenging traditional practices and encouraging purposeful inquiry.

Jane Pritchard is the head of Educational Development at the University of Oxford's Centre for Teaching of Learning. She is widely published in the field of educational development and scholarship of teaching and learning, particularly in the field of institutional support for SoTL.