I’ve been teaching German to illiterate students for the last ten years. Illiterate can mean they cannot write in any script or it can mean they cannot write in the Latin alphabet. When I started out, literacy was the basis of learning the language and of a successful life in Germany. This seems to be changing. With the advancement of IT more and more students rely on the oral component of the language. They photograph a text, send it through a translating programm on their smartphone, and then the text is read to them. I suspect that this is the direction our world is moving in.
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pictures imperfect blog 
This is happening in every subject.
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Writing/Reading used to be the foundation for every subject but this seems to become less important.
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I know your students are in a different position, but for us, one of the bits of fun about visiting a country with a new-to-us langauge is learning a few basics beforehand (‘Coffee!’ ‘Beer!’), then getting by as well as possible with miming, drawing, and lots of laughter.
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I think internet translator are great i.e. for tourism. But where it gets dangerous when communication becomes more subtle and AI is just not good enough yet. Nuances are important in language. And in my students case it prevents them from applying themselves and exercising their brains.
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Absolutely. Between AI doing the written homework, and Google Translate the oral, I have no idea how teachers will get students to engage brain ever again.
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Humans are dumnbing down at the same time as artificial intelligence is getting smarter. This doesn’t bode well.
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I fear you might be right.
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