AI Literacy for Multilingual Learners: Storytelling, Role-playing, and Programming

Artificial Intelligence technologies are becoming ubiquitous, transforming the workforce by altering or creating jobs and influencing decisions that affect minority communities. The necessity of AI literacy, comprising knowledge and skills for critical interaction with AI, is increasingly important. Multilingual learners, engaging with both every day and domain-specific vocabulary and syntax, must acquire AI literacy, necessitating tailored pedagogical practices. This article outlines three strategies implemented for multilingual middle school students during a summer camp in Southern California. We argue for a mutually beneficial relationship between acquiring second language proficiency and AI literacy. Supporting these processes, we present three pedagogical strategies: (1) storytelling to model AI decision-making, (2) role-playing as an AI to demonstrate programmability and learning from data, and (3) programming text-to-speech-to-text AI to illustrate sensor functionality and action-reaction concepts. Additionally, we discuss their alignment with AI competencies. These strategies potentially foster linguistic scaffolding and translanguaging, aiding multilingual learners in acquiring new literacies.