Given the new plethora of challenges that young learners are facing, both culturally, health-wise, and on a personal identity/sanity level, the paper makes some major points on possible solutions coming from the academic humanities, with a focus on the need for meaning, communication, and self-expression. We have identified some of the most pressing of these challenges by analysing the students’ portfolios, including project work, and personal reflections handed in during the academic year 2024-2025, and drawing some tentative conclusions: limited attention-span, impaired sense of self-identification and self-development, overwhelming sense of loss as a result of information overload, fake-everything menace, copied/plagiarised reports/project work made by generative AI, trust collapse, reality distortion, and automated feedback which has almost entirely replaced organic biofeedback. In previous research, we have focused more on learning content and materials specifically targeting ESP (English for Specific Purposes and English for the Life Sciences). In the present study, we are compelled by the urgent necessity to address more general cultural aspects which also fall within the scope of the humanities. From the point of view of bio- and ecosemiotics, these issues may best be targeted through language-developing and communicative methodologies such as those made available in the English learning environment.

ESP, Ecological Education, eco-literacy, language learning, sustainable communication.

biology

Presentation: poster