AI is not killing ESL teaching in Vietnam, it is making it better: Expat teacher

I sat in a class today and looked in a room to the back of the class. Sitting in the room was an interactive whiteboard gathering dust because it hasn’t been used in years.

In the class there is a TV, blackboard and one electricity supply with three outlets.

There is little to no Wi-Fi available, and the students still carry out 100 percent of their learning through books and pens.

And as I turned my head to the only cabling in the far corner of the room, I saw the old broken cat-5 cable that was used before Wi-Fi was a thing.

This is the typical classroom in a public school, minus the whiteboard.

When I look at this environment and compare it to the end of ESL learning I see a disparity of pathways.

What AI can do to ESL teaching

There is no doubt the English learning industry in Vietnam is going through major change. But from my own experience, most of that change is positive and it’s not a case of this big monster engulfing the learning space as we know it.

The first big shift I have seen is the ability of AI to understand and accurately produce quality learning material.

Before AI, that material took hours to create and was often riddled with mistakes or left gaps.

Now it is a totally different workspace. AI can generate dictation sentences, cartoons that explain vocabulary and grammar, and games that can be played through slide decks and shown to the whole class.

Teachers who mark papers and exams have gained too. AI is very good at highlighting the basic mistakes in English, which makes marking and reviewing work much faster.

In the end, that means a better learning experience for the ESL learner, no matter what level they are at.

What AI does not do

But here is what AI does not do. It does not create connections.

Language learning is not about science and data. It is about connection.

Language is the tool of connection, and unless you learn through that connection, you will never truly understand the nuance of any language.

That is what ESL learning is really about: taking in the academics, but also understanding the nuance of verbal communication in different surroundings.

That is what we deliver in a classroom.

In that same classroom, we provide discipline, focus and motivation. We turn young minds that have no desire to learn into minds that want to learn.

AI cannot do that. It can deliver the information, but it cannot deliver the motivation or take control of a room full of students.

There is another factor.

Reports have surfaced in national media that the level of English communication among Vietnamese teachers is still at an all-time low.

Many teachers have not taken up the challenge of learning communication skills in English. That creates an even greater need for foreign ESL teachers to be part of a child’s learning experience.

Without a native speaker in the classroom, children will leave school without the ability to manage and control a conversation in English, whether in the workplace or in the community.

ESL is changing, and it is getting better

So, the idea that ESL is dying because of AI cannot be true. ESL is changing, and it is getting better. The learning experience is improving, and so are the learning outcomes.

I can say with confidence that the improvement in students today far exceeds what I saw more than 10 years ago.

Back then, if a student was not learning from the textbook, they fell off the back end and were basically forgotten, because there was so much other work to do.

Now, tools like automated translation from English into the native language help students at the bottom end lift themselves up.

They can understand basic commands and achieve outcomes they never would have a decade ago.

That is what I mean by positive outcomes from AI in the ESL market.

Not only in schools. ESL Learning in business has gone through the ‘snake oil salesman’ period and has come out the other side still in need of ESL Business English trainers.

Over the past few years, businesses across Vietnam have been awash with unsolicited salesmen advising company directors to ditch the foreign labor and take up AI learning for its staff.

With a 75 percent saving on labor cost, it looked like the golden ticket for companies.

But it has mostly failed. AI has been a complimentary service to support some parts of English learning but those companies that terminated foreigners in preference of AI learning are now returning to their traditional learning models because, as they found out, AI has no connection to the nuance of communication.

For me, I am excited. I am learning AI techniques, and I pay for a subscription to one of the major AI companies. I am teaching with the help of AI in my classes, making the most of my textbook content and developing content that was not possible just two years ago.

The more I use it, the better it gets, and therefore the better I get as a teacher.

ESL learning in Vietnam has a long way to go, and it is an exciting time to be part of it. As a teacher we need to embrace the changes and make the most of the new opportunities.

And most of all, we need to create minds and skills that will take Vietnam into the next era of communication.