Digital Literacy and AI Tool Application Among University Foreign Language Teachers: A Survey Study (Published)
As digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) become integrated into higher education, strengthening the digital literacy of university foreign language teachers has become an important part of foreign language teaching reform. Drawing on Digital Literacy of Teachers, issued by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, this study surveyed in-service foreign language teachers at universities in Huai’an, Jiangsu Province. It examined overall digital literacy, AI tool use, and differences across teacher groups. Based on 91 valid responses, the overall digital literacy score was M = 4.09. Digital awareness was the highest-scoring dimension, whereas digital application was the lowest (M = 3.96). Machine translation and generative AI were the most frequently used tools; corpus tools were used least often, and only 37.4% of respondents reported that they could independently conduct corpus retrieval and analysis. No significant differences in digital literacy were found across teaching-experience or professional-title groups. The most frequently reported difficulty was concern about students’ over-reliance on AI (73.6%), and hands-on AI tool training was the most commonly requested form of support (73.6%). These findings support practical training in AI tools, corpus-based and data-driven teaching, and clearer institutional guidance on students’ AI use.
Keywords: AI tool application, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Literacy, university foreign language teachers