Advancing language education with ChatGPT: A path to cultivate 21st-century digital skills

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become increasingly integrated into education, human life, and work as we continue to enter the 21st century, resulting in an increased expectation that learners and humans should possess more skills, referred to as 21st-century digital skills. These skills have become essential for learning, working, and living with Artificial Intelligence and the latest generation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). While recent studies have examined Artificial Intelligence, particularly ChatGPT, in terms of its ability to assist language learners in developing their language skills as well as their subskills, they have not explored its role in the development of their 21st-century digital skills. For this sake, in this study the researchers integrated ChatGPT into the language classroom procedure in three high schools in Tehran, where the language teacher tried to cultivate 21st-century digital skills with ChatGPT and led students to take advantage of its features to improve their 21st-century digital skills throughout the academic year of 2023–24 and then filled out the study survey. The results of the Partial Least Square Modelling Approach (PLS-SEM) showed that ChatGPT's personalization, interactivity, accuracy, and responsiveness, along with its anthropomorphism, significantly shaped language learners' 21st-century digital skills, including critical thinking digital skills, information evaluation skills, creative digital skills, and problem-solving skills. In addition, the study found a sign of digital self-authenticity, where language learners perceived that AI-assisted language learning enhanced their 21st-century digital skills more than previous language learning contexts, albeit at the expense of their digital collaboration skills. Therefore, the study broadened the existing literature by focusing on the 21st-century digital skills of language learners, going beyond their language skills and sub-skills. It suggests that ChatGPT has the potential to enhance and develop language learners' 21st-century digital skills. However, language teachers must devise metrics to encourage learners to engage in both collaborative and personalized language learning with ChatGPT, thereby fostering the development of all 21st-century digital skills.