One of the more consequential announcements came from Cambridge English. Its updated Life Competencies Framework now includes AI literacy, with attention given to understanding AI and identifying fake content.
The change may look modest, but it places AI in a different part of the educational equation. Until recently, most discussion in ELT concerned what teachers could do with AI: generate materials, prepare lessons, create exercises or provide feedback. Cambridge is now addressing what learners themselves need to understand about the technology.
Pearson has approached the issue from another direction. Through the Global Scale of English, it has introduced learning objectives concerned specifically with interactions with generative AI.
Giving instructions to an AI system, assessing the response, clarifying what you want and reformulating an unsuccessful request all involve language. When those exchanges take place in English, they can also become communicative tasks.
That opens an interesting curricular question. AI literacy may no longer sit somewhere outside ELT, filed under digital skills. Some of it could become part of what learners are expected to do through English.
