Sunday, November 14, 2010
ELD teachers in danger?
Last Friday I remember listening to a career project presentation for English on ELD teachers. However today, I just read an article in the Time magazine that could potentially put that career department in danger in the future.
South Korea has developed an English teaching robots to keep students competitive in English.South Korea currently has around 30,000 foreigners to teach English. However the government wants to bring these robots to at least 18 or more schools at the end of the year. Looks like foreign English teachers are slowly being phased out.
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11 comments:
I think that having more robots being able to teach English to people is a good boost in technology, however, I do agree with you that the foreign English teachers will slowly be phased out. More and more people will start losing their jobs due to technology and that wouldn't be good because the income of many families will no longer be as high and some families may possibly be in poverty due to the advancement in technology, which is not only creating more English teacher robots but advancements in the technology field in general.
I feel that technology cannot fully replace human teachers. Yes, they might be more efficient in getting information out to the students but learning is more than just passing of information. For robots like these, I do not know the capacity in which they are able to teach English but I feel that they might be lacking in places of expression and the "romantic" side of the English language. I do not think that robots can be a full substitute for actual human teachers.
I also do not want to see human teachers being replaced by robots. I think that no matter what kind of teacher he or she is, there will be some kind of relationship between the student and the teacher. I feel that this relationship is important in a learning enviroment because it can allow for greater understanding between the teacher and student. I think many colleges/jobs/etc. ask for letters of recommendations from teachers/superiors/advisors/etc because there is a relationship between those people and the student and it is something beyond statistical information. Robots may be a good way to enhance practice of different subjects but it should not serve as an alternative.
I find this a very undesirable way to teach English because i don't feel that the robot would be able to help and answer the question's the people have as easily as a normal human teacher would be able to answer them. Yeah, people say this a boost to our technology boom, but using items like this is turning old traditional ways of doing things obsolete. Yes i enjoy some of the new technological thins they are coming out with these days, people need to see that giving up all of these old ways of doing things for faster, cooler ways to do things is actually harming them more. Some time in the future we are just going to rely on technology to live our lives for us and i find we weren't put on this planet to be lifeless zombies laying around using life simulators or anything technological to do our work for us.
I don't think this would be a very effective method of teaching. Education is more than just a sitting through lecture and learning material; it's about the relationships you form, the questions you ask, and the discussions you have with your teachers and peers. Having robots teach students is a horrible idea because not only would it be difficult to monitor the progress of the students holistically but it would also be hard for the students to ask questions about the material which, I believe, is critical to actual learning. Learning from a robot is literally like learning in a factory and factories sometimes outweigh quantity over quality. Incidentally, this kind of reminds me of the teacher from Charlie Brown :)
How is a robot teacher much different than a textbook, or software such as Rosetta Stone?
This seems like more of a software novelty than anything else. I don't think English teachers have much to worry about here.
This is absurd.
Believe it or not, learning English is not about the grammar, the syntax or the vocabulary (like those above me have mentioned). It is about the interaction.
I can say from personal experience that I wouldn't have learned English as efficiently without interacting with teachers and students around me. Of course, we have to take into account that we are talking about South Korea right now, not America. Of course they would not be able to learn English like those who are in America already because the main language is still Korean, but a robot is not going to be in their benefit. Robots can even worsen the students' ability to learn. In SK right now, most of their English teachers are actual Americans (not just Koreans who know how to speaker English) and the culture that those teachers bring is a critical element for ELD students.
@Anthony & LuShuang:
I think that these robot teachers are a necessary step in this technology-driven world that we are currently residing in. Sure, the technology may not be up to par with real-life teachers at the moment, but the only way to get the robots teaching at that level is to implement them in real-life situations. If we don't do this, then our technology will never improve, and we will never advance.
I see Charlie posting right next to me. I wholeheartedly disagree.
@Ryan
Robots cannot teach at the same level of English teachers. For one, robots, being completely automated, cannot be flexible enough to handle any class problems. The programming involved would be absolutely hideous, likely impossible to actually simulate a real English teacher. Also, your statement that technology will not improve is false. Technology will improve regardless.
I think that robots will never be able to replace teachers, no matter how much they will be able to do. Having robots teach English doesn't appear to be very effective to me as the students might not even take the robot seriously or pay attention in class. In addition, robots are essentially machines, which means that they might stop functioning or their system might break apart. The money used to make and fix these robots can even be more costly than just hiring an ELD teacher who is well qualified to teach English in a foreign country. I heard of a restaurant in Hong Kong that had robots as waiters that took orders and delivered food, but within a year or two, that restaurant had to close down because the robots broke down. Thus, there's a large chance that these robots made to teach English will also break down, creating even more trouble for those who implemented the robots in their schools. I just think that although robots are cool, there are some things that they can't replace in society.
I can't wait to meet a Korean that was taught through this robot, I will just enjoy listening to Engrish at its worse.
Unfortunately, by the time the machine becomes good, everyone will be working to learn Chinese rather than English. But hey, by then, we just need to change the setting to Chinese and we are all set then.
time to jump in.. come on mang... your learning english from a robot!! how that's gonna work? pre-programmed responses? it's gonna take a whole lot of computer thinking to get a something legitimate enough to get a working onversation.
going back to them days of middle school with those spanish recorded conversations.. it's good to learn from if its a recording, but if your trying to simulate a real person talking, a robot is not the way to go.
when i was ESL, english as a second language (same thing), i would learn more from watching tv and talking with friends in english than any class, workbork, teacher, or recording. just going through the real thing made the difference. it's like those who take spanish class just for the class credit... you gotta use it in real life to truly pick up a language. a robot is just another tool to learn the language... a relatively more expensive tool.
raymond lim
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