Assignment C - Part 2.i
Authentic Text
✔ Check the Class Description and Notes on Part 2 on the assignment platform before you begin.
✔ The text should be 500 - 700 words long. (4-5 minutes for listening texts).
✔ In this document, provide a copy of the reading text or a transcript of the listening text you
have chosen.
✔ Ensure the text is referenced, and if you have selected a listening text or video, provide a link.
✔ If you choose a reading text, you can shorten and/or adapt it slightly.
✔ Please supply a copy of the original and your adapted version.
✔ If you have adapted the text, briefly explain the decisions you've made about changing the text
in section b) of the essay.
✔ Highlight 12 vocabulary items (words or phrases) which would be useful to pre-teach.
AI could make it less necessary to learn foreign languages
That is good news for travellers, bad news for soulful connection
https://www.economist.com/culture/2023/08/17/ai-could-make-it-less-necessary-to-learn-for
eign-languages (see referencing document)
On holiday, many will find themselves in places where they do not speak the language. Once upon a
time, they might have carried a phrasebook. The rise of English has made that less necessary. But
most people—at least seven of the world’s eight billion—still do not speak English. That leaves
options like pantomime, a willingness to be surprised by what arrives at dinner—or, increasingly,
technology.
More and more people are using simple, free tools, not only to decode text but also to speak. With
these apps’ conversation mode, you talk into a phone and a spoken translation is heard moments
later; the app can also listen for another language and produce a translation in yours.
You may still get a surprise or two. Google Translate may be the best-known name in machine
translation, but it often blunders. Take “my wife is gluten-free,” the kind of thing you might say at a
restaurant abroad. In French or Italian, Google Translate renders this as “my wife is without
gluten”—true to the words rather than the meaning. DeepL, a rival, does better, offering various
options, most of them along the correct lines.
The best tool may not be a translation app at all. Though not marketed for the purpose, Chatgpt, a
generative AI system that churns out prose according to users’ prompts, is multilingual. Rather than
entering an exact text to translate, users can tell Chatgpt to “write a message in Spanish to a waiter
that my wife and I would like the tasting menu, but that she is gluten-free, so we would like
substitutions for anything that has gluten.” And out pops a perfect paragraph, including the way
Spanish-speakers actually say “my wife is gluten-free”: mi esposa es celíaca. It is a paraphrase
rather than a translation, more like having a native-speaking dinner companion than an automated
© 2020 The TEFL Academy. All rights reserved. 1
Authentic Text
✔ Check the Class Description and Notes on Part 2 on the assignment platform before you begin.
✔ The text should be 500 - 700 words long. (4-5 minutes for listening texts).
✔ In this document, provide a copy of the reading text or a transcript of the listening text you
have chosen.
✔ Ensure the text is referenced, and if you have selected a listening text or video, provide a link.
✔ If you choose a reading text, you can shorten and/or adapt it slightly.
✔ Please supply a copy of the original and your adapted version.
✔ If you have adapted the text, briefly explain the decisions you've made about changing the text
in section b) of the essay.
✔ Highlight 12 vocabulary items (words or phrases) which would be useful to pre-teach.
AI could make it less necessary to learn foreign languages
That is good news for travellers, bad news for soulful connection
https://www.economist.com/culture/2023/08/17/ai-could-make-it-less-necessary-to-learn-for
eign-languages (see referencing document)
On holiday, many will find themselves in places where they do not speak the language. Once upon a
time, they might have carried a phrasebook. The rise of English has made that less necessary. But
most people—at least seven of the world’s eight billion—still do not speak English. That leaves
options like pantomime, a willingness to be surprised by what arrives at dinner—or, increasingly,
technology.
More and more people are using simple, free tools, not only to decode text but also to speak. With
these apps’ conversation mode, you talk into a phone and a spoken translation is heard moments
later; the app can also listen for another language and produce a translation in yours.
You may still get a surprise or two. Google Translate may be the best-known name in machine
translation, but it often blunders. Take “my wife is gluten-free,” the kind of thing you might say at a
restaurant abroad. In French or Italian, Google Translate renders this as “my wife is without
gluten”—true to the words rather than the meaning. DeepL, a rival, does better, offering various
options, most of them along the correct lines.
The best tool may not be a translation app at all. Though not marketed for the purpose, Chatgpt, a
generative AI system that churns out prose according to users’ prompts, is multilingual. Rather than
entering an exact text to translate, users can tell Chatgpt to “write a message in Spanish to a waiter
that my wife and I would like the tasting menu, but that she is gluten-free, so we would like
substitutions for anything that has gluten.” And out pops a perfect paragraph, including the way
Spanish-speakers actually say “my wife is gluten-free”: mi esposa es celíaca. It is a paraphrase
rather than a translation, more like having a native-speaking dinner companion than an automated
© 2020 The TEFL Academy. All rights reserved. 1
