Purpose: This purpose of this study is to examine future fears and reassurances about the nature of the recent artificial intelligence (AI) language model-based application, ChatGPT, use in the fields of scientific research and academic works and assignments. This study aims at exploring the positive and negative aspects of the use of ChatGPT by researchers and students. This paper recommends some practical academic steps and suggestions that help the researchers and publishers curtail the percentage of spread of unethical works such as plagiarism. Design/methodology/approach: The emergence of OpenAI’s Generative Pre-Trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) has recently sparked controversy and heated debate among academics worldwide about its use and application. The concern of experts and researchers about the GPT-3 platform entails how it would be of much support to the researchers and academic staff and how it might be used and misused to negatively affect academic and scholarly works. This research explored future fears and reassurances about the nature of Chat GPT-3 use at academic and scientific levels. The data for this research was obtained through the qualitative interviews of seven experts in AI, scientific research and academic works. The findings of the study showed that ChatGPT-3 has significant potential and is helpful if used wisely and ethically at scientific and academic levels. On the other hand, the results reported the experts' fears of the frequent use of ChatGPT including the misuse of ChatGPT as a tool to plagiarize and make the researchers dependent, not self-reliant and lazy. The widespread concern of many scholars is that ChatGPT would lead to an increase in the possibility of plagiarism and provide less control over research and writing ethics. This study proposed some stages and suggested that AI language model programs, including ChatGPT, should be integrated with widespread publishers and academic platforms to curtail the percentage of plagiarism and organize the process of publishing and writing scientific research and academic works to save the rights of researchers and writers. Findings: The findings of the research presented that ChatGPT can act as a potential and useful tool if used wisely and ethically at scientific and academic fields. On contrast, the results also reported the negative aspects of the extensive ChatGPT's that leads to the spread of plagiarism and making the researchers and the students machine-dependent, not self-reliant and lazy. This study proposed some stages and suggested that AI language model programs, including ChatGPT, should be integrated with widespread publishers and academic platforms to curtail the percentage of plagiarism and organize the process of publishing and writing scientific research and academic works to save rights of researchers and writers. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first of its kind to highlight the relationship between using ChatGPT and the spread of both positive and negative aspects of its extensive use in scientific research and academic work. The importance of this study lies in the fact that it presents the concerns and future fears of people in academia as they cope with and deal with the inevitable reality of AI language models such as ChatGPT.

Purpose Based on an experimental study on English for Specific Purposes (ESP) students, at the Business Department at the University of Bisha, the purpose of the study is to examine the effect of chatbot use on learning ESP in online classrooms during COVID-19 and find out how Dialogflow chabot can be a useful and interactive online platform to help ESP learners in learning vocabulary well. Design/methodology/approach The research paper is based on an experimental study of two groups, an experiential group and a controlled group. Two tests were carried out. Pre-tests and post-test of vocabulary knowledge were conducted for both groups to explore the usefulness of using the Dialogflow chatbot in learning ESP vocabulary. A designed chatbot content was prepared and included all the vocabulary details related to words' synonyms and a brief explanation of words’ meanings. An informal interview is another tool used in the study. The purpose of using the interview with the participants was to elicit more data from the participants about using the chatbot and about how and in what aspects chatbot using the conversational program was useful and productive. Findings The findings of the study explored that the use of chatbots plays a major role in enhancing and learning ESP vocabulary. That was clear as the results showed that the students who used the chatbot Dialogflow in the experimental group outperformed their counterparts in the control group. Research limitations/implications The study displays an important pedagogical implication as the use of chatbots could be applied in several settings to improve language learning in general or learning ESP courses in particular. Chatbot creates an interesting environment to foster build good interactions where negotiation of meaning takes place clearly seems to be of great benefit to help learners advance in their L2 lexical development. Originality/value Examining and exploring whether the use of chatbots plays a major role in enhancing and learning ESP vocabulary in English as Foreign Language setting.

Prior studies in translanguaging have investigated its role in education from different perspectives to understand its efficiency, practicality, and how it promotes or challenges educational and societal aims in different multilingual contexts across the world. However, little attention has been paid to translanguaging in universities with a monolingual environment. To cover this gap, the current study examines teachers' online translanguaging practices and ideologies in Saudi Arabia, where the community language is Arabic but English is commonly a medium of instruction in higher education. The study investigated (a) teachers' practices and perspectives toward translanguaging while communicating online with learners; and (b) how, when, and where teachers find translanguaging to be productive. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach to survey 260 bilingual instructors from universities in Saudi Arabia. In addition, 20 teachers’ video-recorded sessions are observed to assess the functions of translanguaging during online synchronous instruction. Five of these teachers are interviewed using stimulated-recall techniques. Results show that the teachers mostly hold positive views about translanguaging, considering it productive in helping students understand complex terms and in engaging in communication inside and outside the classroom. The data suggests that bilingual teachers of Arabic and English prefer the new bilingual approach of translanguaging and appear to depend less on the traditional monolingual approach to teaching in multilingual contexts.

There has been significant and extensive knowledge production in the last four decades regarding pragmatic language impairment (PLI) in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. The evidence contained in this literature, however, is contradictory. The present scoping review (ScR) seeks to disentangle competing explanations of conceptualizing, defining, and assessing PLI to develop more systematic knowledge suitable for improving early intervention and diagnosing PLI. Our research included retrieving articles, books, book chapters, encyclopaedia articles, and other published material on conceptualizing, defining, and assessing preschoolers' PLIs from online databases. A total of 133 studies have been identified, divided into two types: 63 studies conceptualizing and assessing PLI in preschoolers and 70 studies conceptualizing and defining PLI without regard to age. They were published between 1983 and 2022. The inclusion of studies in the first group was based upon factors such as the age of participants, clinical settings, and the use of PLI assessment instruments. The second group of studies was selected in accordance with Web of Science, Scopus, and Lens database indicators that indicated who were the most popular authors within the field. This review utilized the PRISMA‐ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta‐Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) checklist and the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) guidelines. Results indicate that PLI is being conceptualized inconsistently. Three lists of concepts are reported here, with the earliest concept being “semantic‐pragmatic syndrome” and the most prevalent being “PLI” without semantic features. Among the most common misconceptions of PLI is the use of impairment, disorder, deficit, dysfunction, disability, and many other concepts, both within the same publication and among different authors who have written numerous publications in this field. Researchers and clinicians are confused as to the nature of social (pragmatic) communication disorder compared to PLI, owing in part to its inclusion as a competing concept for PLI. As a final point, we argue that using different assessment methods for PLI is a promising approach to hope for consistency in conceptualizing, defining, and assessing PLI in children with neurodevelopmental disorders or others. The vast number of existing studies that seek to conceptualize, define, and assess PLI in preschool children with neurodevelopmental disorders and other conditions illustrates the broad interest in understanding more about the nature and occurrence of this impairment. Further, these studies also highlight some common patterns, discrepancies, and contradictions in relevant language that suggests researchers in all related fields should endeavour to be consistent in the way these concepts are defined and discussed to avoid miscommunication and confusion across and within the professions, as well as decrease the redundancy and overlap of related information. A consistent conception of language development disorders is necessary to obtain clarity in diagnosis, assessment, intervention, and rehabilitation.