From the KT:
During the second decade of the New Millennium, robots are expected to replace a number of English-speaking teachers here, who come from such countries as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.
At a robotics forum, which brought together 150 experts from across the country late last week in Seoul, participants predicted that English-speaking robots would fill the shoes of native speakers in the future.
“By around 2015, robots should be able to help teachers in English classes. By 2018, they should be able to teach on their own while communicating with students,” said Kim Shin-hwan, an economist at the Hyundai Research Institute.
[...]
Kim said that the numerous native English speakers at Korea’s language institutes – estimated in the vicinity of 30,000 – will lose their jobs in the not-so-distant future.
(HT to reader)
{ 34 comments… read them below or add one }
Wouldn’t this apply to every teacher of every subject in every school, everywhere?
DLB
I wonder if this will put a dent in Korean pot consumption?… I jest, I jest!
SNAP!
Does this imply that robots can also speak and teach English better than Koreans?
Note to Korean government… STOP WASTING MONEY ON ROUNDEYES AND ROBOTS… INVEST MORE IN TRAINING TEACHERS!!!!
Now, they just need to develop robots to learn English so Koreans won’t have to.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
The robots will be programmed to inform students that South Korea is unique becuase it experiences four seasons, Kimchi is delicious not is too spicy for foreigners, and that they (the robots) were created because the foreign teachers they replaced were not law-abiding, didn’t have degrees and abused alcohol and drugs.
oops, should read ‘Kimchi is delicious but is too spicy for foreigners’
Aren’t the students already pretty robot-like?
Kushibo has a, uh… interesting take on this:
http://kushibo.blogspot.com/2010/01/in-year-two-thousand-twenty-english.html
the only way parents will buy into that is if they’re white robots. Perhaps Bender will do fine…
Yeah, I kind of thought that cartoon in the article was incomplete… The robot needs blond hair and blue eyes….
http://theyangpa.wordpress.com/2007/04/12/fake-ad/
Just silly fluff, even for 2018. Why do you need some clunky robot? More and more automation online, better translation in real-time, ubiquitous language apps, all this yes, but why physical robots? Instead you’d expect to see migration to online games that use English, programs in immersive environments a la Second Life and so on, and software bots yes, but no need for some dancing tin can (sorry bots). The computer-based stuff should put downward pressure on real live human teachers, but still won’t replace them entirely. Not until the Singularity…
I read the article and thought they couldn’t really be talking about physical robots (because it’s such a stupid idea) but saw at the bottom of the page that yes, it must be physical machines they’re talking about, because they cite the high cost of robots as a barrier to be overcome. Lol. Robot ESL teachers are called a computer/phone and the Internet, and yes it’ll get better and better.
Totally agree with Robin Hedge.
iRad, therefore iPad…
Korean, Chinese, Japanese English automated translation is still utterly incomprehensible. We might want to get a computer that can actually do a somewhat passable job of understanding one language before we start expecting them to teach one language to a group of people who speak another.
Until the recession cut severely into government revenues, my district spent a lot of money on technology, including purchases of hardware and software and license fees for online programs. These investments have improved instruction but have not reduced the need for teachers. I don’t expect to be replaced by a robot before I retire.
Just buy computer software.
Software/computers/robots–computer assisted learning, generally–are the way to go for memorization-intensive as well as content-based education. But the problem will always be motivation. You can be immersed in English, taught by robots using the best methodologies available, and guided by caring teachers; but if you can’t find the motivation to learn, you won’t. There are countless examples of students learning in the most dire of circumstances, and countless other examples of rich students failing despite the endless support they received.
The designers better not forget to implement a robot anus into their design.
By 2018. Hmm. I guess that means he’ll have to wait 8 years before he realizes he fails at prognostication.
Will robots also take over the job of criticizing the new robot English teachers for being unqualified, drug-using sex addicts?
Robot 1: Hello everyone, I’m your new English teacher. I just replaced my human counterpart yesterday. How are you?
Robots 2 – 60: Anneong Haiseyo! We your new studentsuh. We replace human owners for this classuh. We no speaky Englishi!
(cue Twilight Zone background music)
Oh, now this is a brilliant idea. Why don’t Koreans like to speak English?
“I am not so comfortable speaking in front of the foreigner.”
With robots doing the teaching we’ll have an entire generation of Koreans who are perfectly fluent in English but, having never spoken English to a another human being, totally terrified to try it out on their trips to Korea Town in L.A.
Isn’t this just an article about vibrators?
(Runs and hides.)
This idea is ‘absurd’. He also mentions robots to train toddlers to walk (no more parenting)! And robots to train kids to become more intelligent. I think it’s Mr. Kim who needs training in intelligence.
The Korea Times has become beyond a joke over the last few years, it has always been crap, but some of the silly stories-editorials they run are incredibly ‘Yangpaesque’..
ecorn,
Ah, but English is optional in LA Koreatown…
Fun Fact:
When Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, one of the primary uses he had in mind was to replace teachers. This was more than a hundred years ago.
Ooooh! Irony alert!
On the very same day, the very same page as this robot/teacher piece, the KT runs an article outlining the strategy of Vice Education Minister Lee Ju-ho for Korean students:
“Simply put, our goals are . . . to help them become rational thinkers rather than receptacles of rote knowledge.”
Bam!
@26
Sometimes in this country (when I’m having a bad day) I think the concept of a ‘rational Korean’ is the epitome of an oxymoron! Dokdo hysteria, fan death, East Sea, eating dog makes your penis more effective, four seasons (being a uniquely Korean thing), brawling politicians in the National Assembly, giving aid to a country that’s constantly threatening to blow you up, Kimchi having miraculous health benefits, America starting the Korean war, violent protests and people doing odd-hystrionic things (like covering themselves in bees, setting fire to themselves, stabbing themselves, chopping of their own fingers, hammering birds to death and pulling live pigs apart) all of this and more is highly irrational behaviour. Rote learning does have a place in education (especially if what you’re learning isn’t bollocks nationalist propaganda), but critical thinking is something that many students and educationalists seem to lack in this country.
Korea should market themselves as a place to come and experience weirdness! Their new tourism slogan shouldn’t be ‘Miraculous,Korea’, but rather ‘Irrational, Korea’. Not all Koreans are irrational, of course, but many seem to be at least on a regular basis.
Yes, I am having a bad day today. Most of the time this kind of senseless nonsense is a source of pure entertainment and joy to me. Sometimes in Korea it feels like being in a Monty Python sketch or something similar.
Korean robot students could never reproduce errors in English as well as real Korean students.
The thinking they can do. They critically fail to apply the critical thinking when it’s critical.
Bring on the machines ! Better than most human scum
@27
That’s “Korea, Be Inspired” now.
Teacher robots – hah! It’ll never work. Robots are incorruptible.
Will robots work in room salons by 2018?
Naturally the Koreans who are tasked with programming said robots will follow Standard Procedure and FAIL to consult or heed any “native” English speakers. Hilarity ensues.
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