Curricular alignment in AI-mediated language teaching: An exploratory study on Russian as a foreign language

The adoption of generative AI tools in language education has provided teachers with new opportunities to personalize learning, design syllabi, create and modify content, and offer their learners more detailed feedback (Chaika et al., 2025; Kohnke et al., 2023; Wan & Moorhouse, 2025). However, most implementations remain decentralized and are often driven by individual teachers’ practices rather than institutional strategy, and frequently lack a solid theoretical or pedagogical foundation. This is particularly true for languages other than English, where empirical research is still limited. Without explicit curricular alignment, AI-generated materials can fall short of instructional goals, leading to missed opportunities for meaningful and sustainable integration. This article addresses these gaps by exploring how GenAI can assist teachers in lesson planning and content creation in alignment with CEFR-based curricular requirements. Drawing on the author’s own teaching experience with a university-level Russian as a foreign language course (B1.1), it illustrates how AI tools like ChatGPT can be used to generate a syllabus, level-appropriate vocabulary lists, learning materials, text type templates, and communicative tasks. In addition to practical applications, the article critically reflects on the evolving role of teachers in AI-mediated classrooms, advocating for a human–AI co-teaching approach instead of the commonly perceived “AI versus teacher” dichotomy still prevalent in professional discourse. By combining a review of current research with classroom-based insights, this article offers a practice-oriented exploration of GenAI’s potentials and challenges for curriculum-aligned language teaching. While the case study focuses on Russian at the university level, the observations can be applied to other languages and contexts. The article is intended for language instructors and curriculum developers working within CEFR-based frameworks, especially in higher education and language learning centers.