WKU News

Western Kentucky University’s commitment to applied research will lead Grant Logan, a graduate student in the MAT-TESOL (Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) program, to present at two conferences this spring. Logan will share his research on the intersections of language history, prescriptivism, and artificial intelligence in language education.

On March 14, 2026, Logan will present at the Kentucky Council of Teachers of English (KCTE) Conference in Lexington. His presentation, titled “From AI Dreams to Daily Practice,” will show how AI tools and strategies can transform instruction for multilingual learners.

In April, Logan and English faculty Dr. Trini Stickle will co-present at the Studies in the History of the English Language (SHEL), at Brigham Young University, Provo, UT. In their talk, “Artificial Intelligence as Prescriptive Pedagogy: Reframing the History of the English Language in Writing Studies,” Logan and Stickle argue that unlike traditional classroom instruction, AI systems enforce linguistic norms implicitly through automated suggestions, rewrites, and evaluations of “clarity” and “correctness”. They will demonstrate how linguistics and writing courses are uniquely positioned to equip students with the critical framework necessary to interrogate AI’s prescriptive authority so students and teachers, alike, may better understand standard language not as a natural endpoint but as a historically contingent and socially constructed practice.

Logan’s scholarship is grounded in daily classroom experience. As an ESL teacher at Warren Central High School in Bowling Green, he works directly with multilingual learners whose educational needs inform his research questions. His presentations reflect WKU’s emphasis on scholarship that moves beyond theory to address real instructional challenges faced by teachers and students.

To learn more about the MAT-TESOL Program at WKU, visit wku.edu/english/tesol.