Thanks to my Legal English colleague Prof. John Dundon (who is also in the middle of completing his PhD in linguistics at Georgetown) for putting the Georgetown University Department of Linguistics Annual Newsletter on my radar. One of the unique benefits of being part of the Legal English faculty at Georgetown Law is getting to exist and work in the same university as one of the top linguistics programs in the U.S.
The Newsletter highlights an amazing range of talented folks and fascinating accomplishments. It also provides a great overview of what “linguistics” covers in the current era. Below is a small sampling of items from the newsletter.
The September 2023 issue of AL Forum (the applied linguistics newsletter for TESOL) is out, thanks in part to contributions from several members of the Georgetown Law faculty. And the theme is language, teaching, and generative AI.
Co-edited by Georgetown Legal English ProfessorHeather Weger and George Washington Teaching Associate Professor Natalia Dolgova, it leads with a letter from the editors and includes two articles by Georgetown Law colleagues.
“In this issue, you will find leadership updates summarizing past and future ALIS activities, and this issue provides a closer look at how educators are grappling with the impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology, such as ChatGPT, on our field.”
“This article offers some resources and advice to consider as you make informed decisions about integrating AI into your workflows and prepare students to inhabit an AI-rich world.”
“A detailed case study of his experimental use of ChatGPT to design teaching materials for a vocabulary course, [including] examples of how to prompt ChatGPT to generate materials (e.g., quizzes and practice activities.)”
Prof. Dundon presenting at University of Bialystok
Prof. Dundon gave a presentation titled Approaching Legal English through Transactional Law, which summarized the way that his current class on Contract Drafting at Georgetown Law combines substantive instruction about contract drafting with practice in a number of legal English skills (e.g., adapting language from precedent contracts, explaining contractual changes in ordinary English, and writing professional emails). He walked the audience through his syllabus, course materials, and one of the units from the course.
Questions afterwards related to ways that the course could be adapted to classes in programs that are not overtly US-law focused, as well as different ways to combine expertise from both lawyers and linguists in a single classroom.
Prof. Dundon in Warsaw
Other presentations at the conference related to legal English instruction in a variety of educational and institutional contexts, legal translation, the Plain English movement, and the work of multilingual lawyers in Europe.
Overall it was a fascinating conference, and Prof. Dundon felt very lucky to attend.
