AI's effect on language teachers

[Guest realmayo]

On 5/7/2023 at 10:40 AM, roddy said:

The outcomes are hard to predict. Maybe we end up with teachers able to handle three times as many students with AI assistants. But maybe the associated reduction in costs means four times as many people start learning languages and overall there are more “teaching” jobs. Maybe live translation tech become so good demand for language learning plummets.

 

Definitely agree - internet and email were supposed to remove the demand for postal deliveries.

[SunnySideUp]

On 5/8/2023 at 9:57 AM, Lu said:

Google Translate is now how many years old? and it still can't handle Chinese well. I just fed it a paragraph of 平凡的世界 and for some reason it just skips an entire line and mistranslates one phrase into the opposite meaning.

I second what Lu said. There were the same claims made when Google Translate and others came about, essentially saying it would be such a game changer and the skill of language learning/translating would become more or less obsolete because we'd all go running around with our phones using speech-to-text and then have it all automatically translated. Just doesn't work. So far, whenever a Chinese speaker wanted to get something across they thought I didn't fully understand, they first had to manually correct whatever characters their voice input had come up with (ok fair, they didn't speak super standard Mandarin), but the English translation usually made little sense and it was easier for me to look at the written characters and figure it out that way. And it gets even worse if you want to translate into other languages than English... so I'm skeptical at best.

 

[Moshen]

Quote

There were the same claims made when Google Translate and others came about, essentially saying it would be such a game changer and the skill of language learning/translating would become more or less obsolete because we'd all go running around with our phones using speech-to-text and then have it all automatically translated. Just doesn't work. 

 

I agree.  This reminded me of the time when I was checking into a hotel in a remote part of China.  The clerk assumed I couldn't speak Chinese and typed something into her phone's translation app and showed it to me.  "How long do you want to live here?"

 

Because I knew Chinese, and I was familiar with Chinese-speaking people using the English word "live" where native English speakers would say "stay," I understood what she meant.  If I didn't know any Chinese, this translation would have left me baffled.  

 

And I see issues like this in Google Translate's results all the time.

[roddy]

On 5/8/2023 at 7:42 PM, realmayo said:

Definitely agree - internet and email were supposed to remove the demand for postal deliveries

And I suspect (not checking) that sales of writing paper and pens have plummeted, but revenue from packaging materials and artisan gift pens have rocketed, etc etc. 

 

Money will keep rocketing around the world at speed, it’ll just stop at different places. Which isn’t much consolation if you’re one of the people Santa doesn’t visit. The economic implication of AI isn't collapse, it's disruption and quite possible localised collapses.

[geraldc]

I joined here nearly 20 years ago. There have been numerous tech advances in that time. Character recognition on phones, text to speech, etc. Of the advances I have barely used them at all other than to play with.   

 

The main issues with tech are how they can influence how and what you think. Some warn against auto suggest for pinyin, as with people being lazy, they'll just go with whatever is suggested as it's faster.  Control auto suggest and control how a billion people think/write (or at least influence the next word in the sentance).

 

It's Skynet all over again, once a computer is self aware, does it choose to go with what the goverment says, or an alternative?  Which one is most likely going to result in it being turned off?  What sort of history will it decide to teach you?  If AI comes up with a syllabus, is it a good syllabus?  If there's live translate, will it translate "dodgy" material, or will it obey the government...

 

For me AI is going to be useful when you can tell your foreign phone to get you a local phone number, working wechat account, and a VPN as soon as you touch down in China, and it does it all by itself.  AI should deal with boring mundane stuff, not the fun learning bit.

 

The real test is will AI do a scan of all the exisitng teaching resources and decide if mamahuhu is a phrase a beginner needs to know or not?

[joshuawbb]

Having been a language teacher in the past (still in the field though), one of the deciding factors in the debate is your own acceptance and interaction with it.

 

In translation at least, I see ChatGPT as an incredible leap forward in complexity and quality. Gone are the days of garbled Google Translate sentences - services such as Deepl alongside ChatGPT are producing extremely accurate text translations.

 

In terms of ethics, it's quite true that a translator could take a commercial text, then translate it using Deepl before using ChatGPT to proofread and remove most evidence of Deepl's usage, leaving the easy job of personalisation and minor restructuring. Naturally this would be unethical for a translator to do, but it illustrates what customers could actually do for free in order to get a workable, if not reliable result.

 

As for teaching, I don't think ChatGPT is at the level of replacing teachers yet. There's much to be said for a classroom or human 1-to-1 environment, and the direct participation of a person. People give off subtle social cues that are difficult to simulate, and will think, react and speak at a more realistic speed.

 

However, I'd say it's important for both teachers and translators not to fall into the trap of rejecting technical advances due to perceiving them as a threat. You survive in a field by adapting, and that means learning everything you can about the new tool. You won't gain any high ground by shutting it out.

 

You can see a similar scenario playing out in real time across universities in the UK. Given ChatGPT's explosion in use almost overnight, universities are rushing to publish their own policies and pamphlets regarding its use.

 

Purely by observation (so nothing scientific), student comfort seems to be higher at universities embracing ChatGPT as "reality now" and forming policies that teach ethical use of it (e.g. how it factors into plagiarism), as opposed to outright banning it and aggressively checking student assignments for evidence of its use.

 

For translation, there's probably a good chance it will devalue the work of career translators, but it's not likely to end these careers. Translators still hold skills that AI cannot yet emulate, and AI tools can be used by translators to improve efficiency.

 

For teaching, I think ChatGPT has potential to greatly enhance student engagement outside the classroom. Students would have a makeshift language partner and assignment checker, which may give the teacher more time to work on restructuring lessons and improving content.

 

There might be a day when ChatGPT or other AI services can simulate a competent human teacher. It may well devalue the worth of a teacher's work, but it's also a learning opportunity. If you don't want your job replaced by AI, you've got to embrace and learn from it before you can restructure your work and adapt.

[abcdefg]

On 5/6/2023 at 1:28 AM, Jan Finster said:

At that stage, language teachers (for adults) will have become largely unnecessary.

 

My face-to-face Chinese teachers, when I was living in China, often gave me recommendations on good restaurants, told me what local fruit was in season, what movie was worth seeing, the best bus to take to get to the museum from here, and what herbs their mother recommended to cure a sore throat. One teacher invited me home for a meal during wild mushroom season. Another took me back to her village for a holiday. I stayed in her family home, met her mom and dad, met her grandmother. One teacher accompanied me to the hospital when I was sick and new in town, before I had learned the intricacies of the Chinese system. Another teacher took me to get my mobile phone service revised at China Mobile's big, bewildering service center. Another teacher took me to open my first Chinese bank account. One teacher and her husband took me in tow to try and buy shoes for my big foreigner feet  Another teacher helped me find an apartment to rent. One showed me how to get a discounted bus pass (爱人卡). One showed me how to use the rental bike system, including how to make sense out of the app on my phone. One teacher and a couple of her friends took me to a neighboring town to see yellow spring flowers in bloom. We rode the train to and from, stayed overnight. 

 

Life would have been harder and less fun without a series of wonderful teachers. Generous and kind. They hugely enriched my China years. 

 

 

[suMMit]

Holy mother of pearl! I'm way behind on this, for over a year at least 3 people have been badgering me to try chatgpt. I finally did and feel like someone who has been incarcerated since before cellphones came out and is just now experiencing one.

 

I for one will be chopping my italki lessons by 2/3rds. I can get Chatgpt to teach me pretty much anyway I want, focus on whatever I want, never runs out of patience, free, around 24-7, no pressure, unlimited knowledge about all topics, fast, great at grading to your level, honestly is more interesting than many teachers.

 

Like @Jan Finstermentioned, it is ideal for transforming passive vocabulary into active vocabulary. It's Excellent for improving sentence structures. If I'm not mistaken, it seems to remember words that I've asked about a lot and uses them in later situations. 

 

I gave it the skeleton facts about my recent roadtrip, asked it to fill in and invent some details and wite it into a story. Then told it to ask me questions as if we were chatting about the trip, and then correct grammar in my answers, then help me expand my answers. It asked me the right kinds of questions about different places. With words that came up that I still don't use well, I got it to give me definitions, comparisons, example sentences, antonyms, gap fills, asked it to write a dialog using the words. No teacher can do all this. Perfect for an intermediate + learner. 

 

I'm going to use it to 预习 and  复习 all the stuff I do in books from now on. 

 

Once this puppy can listen and speak in Chinese, I don't think I'd bother with any italki type lessons. Just do lessons on chatgtp and then use what I've learned in the real world. I bet that happens sooner than later. 

[Moshen]

Are you giving the instructions in English or Chinese?

And this is on the free ChatGPT, correct?

[suMMit]

Mostly Chinese, sometimes English(80/20). I've also told it to remember that I'm learning Chinese and I'm currently intermediate / upper intermediate level. 

 

*I like to use Chinese with it until I come to a word or phrase I don't know the Chinese and then just chuck in the English word. Later it always supplies the missing Chinese word. 

 

Free chatgpt, yes

[becky82]

Here's an example of my interactions with ChatGPT (from just now).  I have private instructions explaining that I'm an advanced student, and generally like many example sentences, and don't want English nor pinyin.  Over time, I've learned to not be bossy: I say what words (etc.) I'm studying/revising and let ChatGPT tell me what it thinks is important.  I type in English because I type much faster that way.

 

On 7/1/2024 at 5:03 PM, suMMit said:

If I'm not mistaken, it seems to remember words that I've asked about a lot and uses them in later situations. 

 

Yes, it absolutely does that.  It's like effortless SRS.

 

I've also been using Ushabti a lot recently; it provides AI-generated Chinese-learning podcasts, about whatever you want, like Monty Python or tungsten.  I usually generate episodes for whatever wacky things I encounter on Reddit.  (You can play episodes here, and you can generate them using the app or via Discord.)

 

I don't think I'll be going "cold turkey" on human teachers; they still bring much to the table, such as human-human interactions.  At the same time, there's only a certain amount I can justify spending on teachers.

 

I feel there is a "novelty bonus" to new methods, i.e., all methods are good to start of with (because they fill in the gaps of your previous methods).  But I've been using ChatGPT for over a year now, and it's remaining as essential as Pleco, and it seems to be improving (it couldn't handle "can you give me example sentences where [word] is used as a verb?", but now it seems to be able to).  We'll see how things go.

 

I feel like I should get the most out of it before enshittification kicks in.

[TaxiAsh]

On 7/1/2024 at 6:03 PM, suMMit said:

for over a year at least 3 people have been badgering me to try chatgpt. I finally did and feel like someone who has been incarcerated since before cellphones came out and is just now experiencing one.

😂

It is amazing!

 

I'm going to use it to learn my new target language, but ask it to translate everything into Chinese at the same time. Might as well kill two birds with one stone.

[Jan Finster]

I do love ChatGPT and probably more so Claude for learning Chinese, but I have become very frustrated with its usage limits. I very rapidly exceed the limits for free use and thereafter it becomes plain stupid. It is not just reverting from 4.0 to 3.5 but to a version that is programmed to make mistakes and act obtuse in order to make people buy the pro version. I would do so in a heartbeat, if I knew I could use it for 3-4+ hours per day with full capacities. However, even the pro version seems to have limits I would quickly exceed. I hope there will be an option fir heavy users in the future. 

[PerpetualChange]

I found a good use case for ChatGPT and learning Chinese recently. 

Those long, hard to parse "classical" sections of Jin Yong novels that no contemporary reading or textbooks seem apt to prepare you for? 

Dump 'em into ChatGPT, and get a complimentary baihua explanation of the passage. Then you can go back and look at it, and see if you can parse it. 

[vellocet]

Eh, I don't see it.  A program won't be able to show you with its mouth how to make the proper sounds.  And listen to you and make you repeat it until you get it right.  Or make you laugh in class.  Or tell you stories about how you once used this exact construction correctly to get exactly what you wanted, and why it's important.  Chinese people like teachers and like more gaining their respect.  

For foreign learners of Chinese? The science of teaching adult learners so horrific that that AI might actually be an improvement.  Teaching students 我 as their first character, gasp. Hell, even handwriting is obsolete and has been for some time now. 

[vellocet]

On 5/9/2023 at 5:14 AM, SunnySideUp said:

ere were the same claims made when Google Translate and others came about, essentially saying it would be such a game changer and the skill of language learning/translating would become more or less obsolete because we'd all go running around with our phones using speech-to-text and then have it all automatically translated. Just doesn't work.

Hell, I'm old enough to remember when Anki was going to revolutionize language learning and make it effortless, like working an exercise bike.  We would all become polyglots.  

These days it is mostly used by medical students to memorize the names of arteries and such.  

[suMMit]

"For foreign learners of Chinese? The science of teaching adult learners so horrific that that AI might actually be an improvement." 

 

^This. Chinese teachers suck at teaching foreigners imo. Period. I've had enough italki lessons. I rarely get pronunciation correction from them anymore (which I do think for beginners that's an important reason to have a real teacher), they mostly just try to feed me more vocab. whooppee not worth the price. I'm going to take a six month break from Italki teachers and switch to:

 

Univerbal, real life(since I'm in country), the book I'm following, and chatgpt for questions about the book.

 

I'll revaluate after 6 months. Right now I think Too many advantages over italki(whatever company) lessons. :

 

 

Way, way, way cheaper, 

Unlimited practice sessions

No scheduling, canceling, 

No worrying about being hungover, tired, bad mood, f'd up hair, 

No awkwardness, 

No having to talk about personal stuff you don't want to talk about, 

Car repeat a topic as many times as you want, 

Clear explanations, 

Clear corrections, 

No interruptions, 

Can listen to their question as many times as you want, 

Realistic speaking situations, 

Unlimited topics, 

No internet connection issues

Etc, etc

 

Just my opinion, at this stage of my learning (strong intermediate), I completely understand why people would rather have a real teacher

 

[PerpetualChange]

I too have been disappointed with iTalki and Preply. I have worked with several Preply tutors over the years, had one really decent one from Taiwan who I worked with for 2 years. But like most situations, it got stale. From then, I've tried a variety of teachers, and all of them were disappointing - some really bad and others just clearly students in way over their heads. 

 

But what a good tutor or teacher can do, that AI can never replicate for me, is inspire me to learn. I like going to a class where there's a teacher and peers. Ideally, in person. Without that, I struggle to find a footing. There's just a cultural piece to the act of language learning that gets lost online, where I am learning in a vaccum. I genuinely enjoy the process of language learning because I enjoy the feeling that my world is getting bigger. Learning via individual online lessons or from a BOT of all things doesn't make me feel like I'm becoming a larger, more encultured person. It just makes me feel like I'm falling deeper down my own well. 

[Tomsima]

I find I tend to have a different relationship with teachers than with tutors. Teachers are a little more distant and more general; excellent for laying down foundations and building motivation with peers. Conversely, tutors are much more personal and help address one's individual problem areas and bad habits; they are the answer to getting through whatever plataeu you are working through, but at the cost of a more intimate and necessarily awkward situation as student and tutor try to 'click'. AI tools like chatgpt seem to fit the bill for tutor not just because they are convenient and can answer your own specific questions, but they avoid the awkwardness of not 'getting' each other. However, this challenging aspect of language learning, the 1-on-1 tutoring where you feel awkward and embarrassed, is precisely where the learner makes the intermediate to advanced jump. Because embarrassing, awkward social interactions are secretely what many of us are hoping we can avoid when putting in those extra hours learning Chinese, a 1-to-1 human tutor is the only real answer imo. AI will make you feel like you are progressing, but if you aren't out of your comfort zone you are never going to get over your plateau, and will likely be limited to reading There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but if your goal with learning Chinese is for speaking and listening, even an AI that speaks to you using high quality TTS will not be the answer, because the 'heat of the moment', the 'reality' of your moment on stage with a tutor is just not there.

 

Just my two kuai, of course

[abcdefg]

On 8/22/2024 at 9:05 AM, Tomsima said:

However, this challenging aspect of language learning, the 1-on-1 tutoring where you feel awkward and embarrassed, is precisely where the learner makes the intermediate to advanced jump.

 

Agree! Well said! It is one of those high-value interactions: teaching mimics real life. Lets you work through difficult material in a protected environment.