I cannot believe that I have to state the obvious here, but yes, human connection trumps the illusion of one done through interaction with chatbots.

Anyway, I had decided to do a review of Airlearn at the same time I was using this language learning method. Being so disappointed in Airlearn and its slop, I did not think that I would enjoy writing a review for AI-powered chatbots and how they ‘teach’ or ‘tutor’ languages. Instead, I decided to take up a more natural and interpersonal language learning method, and provide you my opinions and reasons why I would recommend such a method.

In any language learning journey, a learner’s greatest fear would be properly engaging in conversations. While constant engagement in conversing in various topics helps train one’s listening and speaking skills, in informal contexts, it also teaches some slang or informal vocabulary one would largely not encounter in a foreign language class. However, people can be judgmental, and there would be this general fear or lack of confidence in one’s command of their target language, such that they would fear the possibility of being embarrassed or judgmentally criticised when speaking that language. This is why some would refer to as language anxiety, or speaking anxiety. It is perhaps a significant barrier in a learner’s command of a language, and how this is dealt with varies from learner to learner.

Language anxiety is not really an easy thing to overcome. Nevertheless, there are largely two divergent solutions one could take to deal with such an anxiety. The first is immersion or exposure to the target language, and the second substantially less effective one is to use the language within a certain restrictive bubble. Let us talk about the former here, and introduce the concept of a language café.

A language café is a little get-together session which brings together native speakers of different languages where they talk about various topics in languages that they are learning. A person bilingual in English and Finnish, for example, may be interested in learning German, and would converse in German with a member who is a native speaker of German. Sometimes, a language café may center around a single language, while others depend on the languages spoken by members of the language café group. These sessions or meetings may be held in person or online, allowing people from different backgrounds to simply speak, chat, and share stuff within these conversation groups, thereby making new friends, or getting to know different people.

Often, these language café groups tend to have a rather inclusive community, as everyone’s interest is to practice speaking in a foreign language, or help other speakers in foreign languages. As such, having a judgmental attitude would generally not fly well in communities like this. This provides a conducive speaking environment to practice speaking and hearing, and even receive further avenues or recommendations for resources when learning a certain language.

Such interactions may extend beyond the language café itself. Should you make new friends from these sessions, off-session practice would be possible, helping to build more interpersonal skills and things along those lines. Many of these interactions also occur in casual settings, and hence learners would generally not have to worry about being judged and formalities. In my opinion, I think that these two arguments are the key unique points about such a language learning method, on top of creating an environment for people to overcome language anxieties.

On the other hand, chatbots largely detract from these meaningful interactions and conversations. Conversing with chatbots to practice a target language could create unnatural situations, or failure to account for casual or formal types of speech or even honorifics. Chatbots based on large language models generally function like an advanced form of predictive text, as it uses existing data to predict which words are most likely to follow a given one, and uses that in generating their response. Worse still, such information may not be entirely accurate or natural, risking misleading a language learner about some words or grammar points.

Worst of all, by practicing a target language with a chatbot, it does not really help overcome language anxiety. Instead, chatbots function as a coping mechanism for language anxiety, and does not really adequately prepare learners for the real speaking world. Confining these interactions within a bubble of chatbot and classrooms may also restrict the ability to form interpersonal relationships with other speakers otherwise found in circles like a language café. These considerations are pretty much left out of the discussion when talking about the effectiveness of AI-powered chatbots in language learning, as language learning is not at all a single-person affair. It requires interaction with people for various goals, like practice, resources, courses, and the like.

Universities and local community clubs are normally the first thing one would look up to find a language café to join, although language learners may also look up a language café that is specific to a certain language. Of course, a limitation would be the range of languages that are spoken within a language café. If your locality tends to be more monolingual or less cosmopolitan, you are less likely to find an in-person language café which includes speakers of slightly more obscure languages. Instead, you would have better luck with looking up online-only language cafés.

Nevertheless, having made the time to attend some language café sessions online and in person myself, I have made meaningful connections with fellow language learners in my local community, as well as online, potentially internationally. I think the interpersonal relationships that I have built are something that cannot be surpassed when talking to a chatbot, and thus, I would strongly recommend looking around for language cafés to practice speaking and hearing.

Despite the current empirical evidence that chatbot integration into language learning may be effective, I do not think that these findings should overshadow the more intangible benefits of language cafés. As such, on a positive note and twist amidst this series of posts about AI in language learning, why not give language cafés a chance? It is way better to talk to a human than a bot.