CEAL has launched a new elective course “Working with AI to Improve Communication”

CEAL has launched a new elective course, Working with AI to Improve Communication (LUE3006), designed to help students critically analyse and improve AI generated text. This is part of its commitment to approaching the challenges and opportunities of the AI revolution in a positive and human centred manner. It is pleased, therefore, to offer this course to enhance its wide range of elective English Language courses.

Working with AI to Improve Communication (LUE3006) is an innovative course designed to offer students the opportunity to analyse the language of Generative AI and improve it so that it meets its real world purpose with clarity, impact, and effectiveness.

Using key linguistic concepts such as Politeness Theory and Systemic Functional Linguistics, students on the course analyse AI generated text, and understand how it differs from human written text, and where they need to edit it. By doing so, they learn to maintain control over their written communication, using the strengths of the system and learning where they need to edit and improve.

The course focuses on both academic and professional writing, and also includes content about the wider potential social impacts of AI, from medicine to publishing.

Mike Groves, Senior Lecturer at CEAL, designed and teaches the course. He said, “Effective communication needs to be grammatically correct, but that is not enough in itself. We need to understand that communication is a social process, and therefore the communication needs to fit into the way we do things. Unfortunately, while GenAI is currently very good at writing grammatically sophisticated text, it is less good at understanding social conventions, especially internationally. This is where this course is most useful.”

The course ran for its first time in the second term of 2025–2026. Student evaluations were strong, with 93% of students agreeing that they had learned a lot from the course. Mike Groves added, “It was clear that, for many students, this was the first time they had looked at AI and language in this way. As an educator, it was extremely satisfying to watch them deal with the concepts, begin to understand them, and finally start applying them constructively and sensibly. I am confident that this will help them use AI as a tool, and improve their communication skills, both in university and beyond.”

The course will be available in term two of 2026–27, and students can enrol in the normal way. More information on this and other CEAL courses can be found at https://www.ln.edu.hk/reg/f/page/40818/LUE.pdf