Is AI replacing English teachers in Vietnam?

Now, in 2025, a new wave is coming, one that might just end the idea of language teaching in Vietnam as we know it.

In February this year, I was called into the office. I worked at a global IT company. It wasn’t a fun 30 minutes, as I was told that at the end of my contract, my time at the company would come to an end.

I was shocked. After six years of loyal service as an ESL teacher and communications trainer, I would be out of work and forced to start over in a world that has changed so much over the past six years.

But the worst was yet to come. A few weeks later, I was informed that the English program at the company would no longer be based on human-to-human teaching. Instead, it would be replaced by a system offering English communication learning via AI-generated voice instruction.

Rather than becoming angry, I decided to explore the benefits of using AI to teach English to learners of all ages and levels. The conclusion I reached is that it appears to be something akin to snake oil.

The AI concept is built around a set of algorithms that perform specific functions. I tested some of these systems and saw that they were very good at developing AI voices that were easy to understand and capable of generating massive, almost endless, amounts of content.

These systems could adapt to different ages and English levels based on user input. Once a level was selected, the AI would pull from recognized modeling systems and present the content in various forms to allow students to interact with it.

In front of a CEO or school principal, these systems look and sound fantastic. They appear to do everything you could want—within reason. And CEOs are terminating contracts with trainers to save large sums of money by replacing them with AI systems, both in workplaces and some schools.

But there’s one small issue with this change: no one asked the learners what they want or how they want to learn. We seem to have forgotten that learners are human, and for millennia, humans have taught humans.

One unique trait that humans possess, which most animals do not, is the ability to learn from stories. Rather than experiencing events first-hand, humans listen to stories and learn from them. This is how many religious texts have been used for centuries.

In the ESL classroom, human-to-human storytelling is how learners of all ages learn to communicate. This is very different from learning vocabulary and grammar. For basic words and grammar, apps, books, and self-practice can help without a teacher.

But when a learner is required to stand up and use that academic knowledge in oral communication, AI falls terribly short. AI can check grammar, fluency, and vocabulary, but it cannot mentor a child or adult to logically manage a conversation.

I’m sure there will be 100 AI salespeople eager to prove me wrong. But until we have AI systems that can replace teachers, we will never have an AI system capable of mentoring someone who lacks the knowledge and confidence to speak or present in front of others.

We are in uncharted waters, and the pipe dream of AI ESL teachers is capturing the market with promises to do more than a teacher—at a quarter of the price. These untested systems work well and will play a supportive role in ESL education, but they are not the replacement that company accountants are hoping for.

With pipe dreams, flashy presentations, and empty promises filling school halls and boardrooms across Vietnam, foreign and local English teachers are not being hired, or, in my case, are ending long-term relationships with once-great companies.

For me, the final word doesn’t come from me, but from my students. During my farewell, we discussed this topic. Their comments made it clear: learning English communication is not a system, not mechanical, not a process. It is a human action that allows them to make one of a million choices at any moment—to find the right response, the right words, body language, and tone to support their story and motivate the listener to understand.

I have no doubt that AI systems will have an excellent role in supporting learners at all levels in the ESL space. But I am deeply saddened by the words and faces of learners who are losing time and opportunity because this current generation may end up as the guinea pigs in an AI experiment with uncertain outcomes.

I hope I’m wrong.