Expert explains why AI does not replace live communication in language learning — Fortune
Apps and artificial intelligence can help users master vocabulary, grammar and practice individual language skills, but genuine language proficiency requires interaction with other people. Fortune reports, citing Todd Hughes, who trains language tutors at Rosetta Stone.
According to him, fluency is not the same as language proficiency. Fluency primarily refers to how quickly and smoothly a person speaks, while proficiency encompasses reading, writing, listening and speaking. It involves the ability to understand an interlocutor, choose the necessary words, express oneself accurately and respond when a conversation departs from a predicted scenario.
Different skills within one language
Hughes cited his own language-learning experience. He speaks Spanish at an almost native level, understands spoken French well and reads it, but makes mistakes when speaking it. In Danish, he can read novels without much difficulty, while listening comprehension and pronunciation remain more challenging for him.
In the expert's view, short social media videos in which polyglots order food or greet people in different languages can create a false impression of their level of knowledge. They demonstrate an individual successful episode but do not show whether a person can sustain a conversation, discuss an abstract idea or adapt to an unexpected change of topic.
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Limits of real-time translation
AI can generate exercises, check written work and create texts appropriate to a learner's level. Hughes compared such capabilities to a large library that is always open. At the same time, he assesses translation tools cautiously, since words have not only dictionary meanings but also cultural and social nuances.
Duolingo Chief Product Officer Cem Kansu also noted that real-time translation can help understand an interlocutor at a particular moment, but it does not replace human connection, cultural understanding and the experience of speaking independently. Even an accurate translation does not confirm a person's ability to continue a dialogue, ask clarifying questions or change a response according to the interlocutor's tone and wording.
Hughes believes that it is precisely during live dialogue that a learner simultaneously listens, formulates a response, follows another person's reaction and adapts to the course of the conversation. In his view, technology does not yet fully reproduce such nonverbal signals and social nuances.
