ESL Lesson Plan

Lee,

I quite agree that linguistic "dominance" changes with political and economic conditions. We owe our jobs in part to the long runs of the British and American Empires.

But I think that there is another force emerging that will make the whole point moot. Computer translation will put us all out of work long before another language steps onto center stage. Up until now computer translation has been fairly weak- not unlike computer chess was twenty years or so ago. Faster computers and more sophisticated, statistics-based software is rapidly changing that sorry state of affairs.

So what happens to the ESL teaching profession when people can communicate effectively without having to learn a common language like English?

Nigel

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Note from Lee:

Nigel, a very perceptive aspect of technology you bring into this discussion.

There already exist fine examples of digital text language conversion software available (at still exorbitantly high fees) for businesses and professional document translators (like Systran, for example, which goes for around $1000 USD). With a little proof-reading by a native speaker, the results of this software are often quite useable.

We've discussed technology on the blog before, e.g. Spellcheckers and services like www.turnitin.com to detect plagiarism, PowerPoint presentations, grading software and teacher observation software but the possibility of reliable translating software has gone unmentioned in this forum.

This scenario definitely ties in to the Sci-fi theme of a personal translator that all language users carry on their person, for example, to understand all the known tongues.

You're absolutely right. If such technology is really within our grasp (do you think in our own lifetimes?), will spending valuable time, effort and money really be a concern for the language-customer demographic of the future? It might be a non-issue for the common layperson. Better to spend the same money on the translating device and thereby regaining the lost time and effort, right?

Of course, there will always be some academics and linguists needed by the industry to actually write/program the software but how much ESL business (in the sense that we know it now) will actually be needed in a future where portable, battery-operated "interpreters" can be built right into, say, mobile-phone software? As an early prototype, think of the goofy, electronic travel language dictionaries already available. You punch in what you want to say, it comes out in another language, complete with "voice" so you won't run the mistake of mispronunciation.

I wonder if blog post responses might also someday be written by artificial-intelligence software. (There’s no question that my intelligence is artificial, lol!)

Thanks again Nigel for bringing this topic to our attention. It does make for some interesting discourse.

Lee,

The only time that English becomes unpopular is when it is NOT anymore used as an international language. At present, more than 900 million people around the globe speak English either as a second and/or foreign language. If other international languages like French, Spanish, etc. can surpass that figure, then that's it.

Edna

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Note from Lee:

Edna, that does seem to be the conventional wisdom. In 1998, 885,000,000 people on this planet spoke Mandarin Chinese as their first language (source: The New York Times Almanac, 1998). I don't know off-hand how many speak Mandarin as a SL in 2005, but how ever many there are, it only adds to that number.

When that total surpasses the English mark, then what? Doesn't mean English will disappear, just means it will have a hearty competitor.

There's a good discussion going on at Google regarding the question of "Best Languages to Learn" at http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=313881

Thanks for your comment. All opinions are appreciated here!

Lee

I have no use for a language where it is not spoken by many many people. I mean what good is Madarin for me here in Korea or America or South America, etc.

People are not going to beat their brains out learning Mandarin, perhaps, certain company reps may. How about Hindi and Urdu? Not useful either. It's not trade or the numbers of speakers that determine language use.

You see, we are taking English to them, much in the same way that Spanish is brought to us by the Hispanics in America. A real person speaking a real language is better than any tech thing, which is limited available.

Tech things don't do idioms or slang very well, nor do the robotics do stress. English is here to stay. A language dies only when children are not learning it.

William

Lee,

Though it is becomming more vogue in certain industries to learn Mandarin, and yes, there one-point-however many billions of people who speak it, the truth is that Mandarin Chinese will probably never be a bridge language like English is or French was.

It is highly unlikely in the next hundred years, even as China becomes surpasses the US as the world's prevailing power, that two people from, say, Germany and Japan will meet each other in a bar in, say, Vietnam and start speaking Chinese to each other. In countries all over the world people learn English not just to be able to communicate with people in the US and Britain, but also to communicate with people from everywhere else in the world who are doing the same thing.

And despite the growing popularity of Chinese film and the presence of Chinese people all over the world, their language still hasn't really caught on. I think you need to know some 2,000 Chinese characters to be able to get the gist of a simple newspaper article. You think anybody is going to pledge to tackle that on a whim?

While the US will eventually wane in political, economic, and military might, the language it speaks will not. In 100 years there could be 1.5 billion speakers of Mandarin, but there will still be more people studying English and Spanish because it can be used in more places. Hell, I teach at a university in Thailand. Students here start studying English at a young age, but I have many who have also study a third language. And even though China is right around the corner, you know what language they chose to study more often than not?

Spanish.

Joe

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Note from Lee:

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