It’s an ongoing debate I have with one of my students. He says English/language teachers specifically will have a hard time finding work in about 2-5 years. I disagree, especially for students who want a more conversational approach and can afford the classes.
What do y’all think?
For the lecturing portion of what a teacher does? Probably; YouTube’s replaced/supplemented mediocre professors and tutors for a decade already on a number of subjects (e.g. math).
I hadn’t considered using an LLM to practice my Japanese, but if it can spit out entire articles of mostly coherent language, it could probably serve as a practice conversational partner with reduced feelings of embarrassment for some people too. Doubt it’d be worse than the “split up into pairs (of non-native speakers trying to talk to each other despite insufficient vocabulary)” exercises that we had to do back when I was in school… Picking up an AI-nese accent would be a risk though, like learning too much of your Japanese from anime or your English from Hollywood movie trailers. (I didn’t really understand that until I heard a guy on YT several years ago using the “In a world… where blah, blah, blah…” movie trailer cadence repeatedly as part of his plain old regular commentary. That was… enlightening.)
For the “babysitting” part of what teachers do? Probably not any time soon.
I have been playing Babadum for vocabulary, it has a Japanese option: https://babadum.com/play/?lang=9&game=1
Ha! I’d like to see AI try classroom management. That would go downhill quickly I surmise.
But, introverts would benefit as you say, as they do in virtual language classes. I hadn’t thought about the accent.
For learning new languages, LLMs often default to some specific level of formality that doesn’t apply to all scenarios, so using it as an aid might be helpful but it can’t wholly replace lessons.
This comes up with Japanese as well apparently. My partner sometimes uses ChatGPT to practice new languages, but it defaults to a more formal form than you’d probably use with friends. Not a huge issue, but just be aware you’ll need something else if you want to properly learn and not just practice a little.
Yeah, that’s what I mean by AI-nese. Formality in Japanese is great point.
Classes won’t necessarily help you there as much as you’d like though. Even after 3+ years of them as a kid, I was told on a foreign exchange trip (where my host brother spoke much better English than my Japanese) that his family found it weird how formal I was, and I had to explain that my teachers literally had not taught me how to speak informally yet!
Don’t get me started on how frustrating Japanese language curriculum is… I took 7 years of classes (starting in elementary school) and not a single teacher even mentioned the word 君 – which is in damned near every pop song! (grumble grumble…) I had to learn that word from TVTropes rather than any of my textbooks because after 7 years of study, I still couldn’t understand the variations of “you” that are actually used in a typical episode of anime. 🤦️
Can you imagine going through seven years of English classes and no one brings up the word “ma’am” even in passing? Or going through three years of classes without introducing contractions like “can’t”?! (rant rant rant… 🙄️)