english teachers in the future

English teachers in the future   Momoka MUTO

 

     When we learn something new, we need models, examples, or teachers who can teach the subject. If we think so, maybe we can say teachers are essential for learning and text books are also a kind of teacher. Then, if we didn’t have human teachers in school, what kinds of teachers would there be? They are probably robots or AI. However, I don’t think that robot teachers will be introduced in education, especially, in a school. That means, human teachers will remain in the classroom in twenty years’ time and even much. There are reasons why I think so.

     First, the task of teachers isn’t only teaching subjects but also taking care of students and understanding students. Education doesn’t only mean teaching. Therefore, regardless of English, human teachers are needed for education in a school because robot teachers can’t understand the emotions and thoughts of humans at this stage.

     The second reason is connected with the first reason. That is conversation with students. The harder students learn a subject, the more questions they have and they will ask them to teachers to improve. Moreover, some students don’t understand which parts of the subjects they can’t understand the most so teachers have to reveal the problems that they have. Even if robot teachers can answer some questions which have already been programmed in, they wouldn’t be able to deal with such problems.

     Although the first and second reasons are mainly involved with education, the third one is for English teaching. This is the differences of pronunciation. These days, a lot of kinds of English and their pronunciations are emphasized day by day because of a sense of value which puts importance into differences. There are as many kinds of pronunciation as there are teachers. Then, students can learn various pronunciations. In this current world, such a realization of English is important for communicating with other people when we use English as a global language.

     For these three reasons, I think there will still be a need for English teachers in the classroom in twenty years’ time.