If you have painful memories of high school Spanish or have trouble ordering food while traveling abroad, you’re not alone. Although more Americans than ever report speaking a second language at home, many Americans remain monolingual. Language learning apps have been trying to change this for over a decade, with many of them recently championing the new use of artificial intelligence as the most effective way to learn languages.
Apps like Duolingo have adopted AI to create a variety of exercises and provide users with basic grammar lessons. Natulang, a new AI-powered language learning app, is one of the first apps to offer a completely AI- and voice-based curriculum. Thanks to its speech recognition and synthesis model, it promises to teach speaking skills that many applications have tried and failed to teach effectively.
Language learning has undergone a revolution in the last few decades. Gone are the days of having cassette tapes or phonics phrasebooks to learn in your car. Apps like iTalki or Verbling, which match users with cheap contract teachers, have made it possible to learn an entire language from your phone or computer for very little money.
You can find adults adopting self-study methods on different web forums, such as Reddit’s r/LanguageLearning subreddit; Here thousands of users provide tips and support for hopeful multilinguals.
Natural speech represents the final frontier for many students who do not dive into their chosen language. Anyone who has ever taken a language class can probably understand that hours spent in front of a textbook, conjugation tables, and flashcards do not necessarily translate into fluent conversation. So how should students who don’t have the time, money, or confidence to study with a human teacher learn to speak their new language?
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Many of the most popular applications have long relied on speech synthesis; it’s a form of artificial intelligence that helps the robot voice sound more human by mimicking speech patterns and tone while maintaining distinctly perfect diction. But each application has handled the ongoing AI revolution differently.
Babbel, for example, has launched a new class program where users can book a free virtual language lesson, just like you would book a yoga workout. Memrise, an app that relies heavily on video and audio of native speakers chatting, has developed a language bot that will transcribe chat messages almost-real time with users (there is still a noticeable delay between the prompt and the message). At the far end of the AI commitment is Duolingo, which is building the third tier of its subscription model for AI-powered learning (and notably laying off 10 percent of its contractor staff by the end of 2023).
However, Natulang represents the extreme end of the AI usage spectrum with its speech recognition model. Natulang is an almost entirely speech-based practice, unlike practices that rely on tapping pre-selected words. The app simply displays an ongoing conversation log, with no ads, flashy animations or dashes. App developer Maksym “Max” Hryniv told The Daily Beast that this was intentional. This is also part of why Natulang believes it is effective.
The concept is simple. The app asks you to say a short sentence in your target language. If you get it right you move on to the next statement. If you get it wrong, the app will correct you. This is how you progress through a simple conversation, reusing grammatical structures and words until they become second nature.
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Natulang was born from Griniv’s desire to teach the language the way he learned it as a Ukrainian who grew up speaking Ukrainian, Russian and Polish and later learned French and English: constant immersion in sound. Immersion is the key to language learning. Toddlers acquire language this way long before they go to school, and research has shown that language immersion can train adults learning a new language to “think” like a native speaker. The app has a team of human linguists who create phased lesson plans and use artificial intelligence for speech recognition and synthesis.
While Hryniv agrees that AI is flawed and humans need to be included in the education process, he strongly believes in the power and technology of Natulang. “Every aspect of classical education will be transformed and even replaced by artificial intelligence,” he said.
Use with caution
Not all language learning experts are convinced that AI can or should replace human education. K-5. Marta García, who teaches English as the language of learning to classrooms, deliberately resisted introducing technology into her classroom post-pandemic.
“After months of school closures and online learning, there needed to be an emphasis on improving relationships, social skills and how to be in the community,” he said. “Language cannot be separated from culture and social interaction.” While he believes it’s possible to incorporate artificial intelligence as a supplement to language learning, he says students already struggle with the rote “roboticism” of the classroom.
García’s students are mostly immigrants, and his teaching is inherently committed to anti-racism, social justice, and decolonization. These are factors that we know AI is not uniquely equipped to deal with. There are dozens of examples of AI replicating human bias, like image generators that produce hypersexualized images of women, facial recognition software that can’t tell Black faces apart, or chatbots spewing racist language.
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Even a bot that never uses overtly racist language can perpetuate linguistic discrimination. The AI prefers standard American English over the syntax associated with working-class variations of English (e.g., preferring “isn’t” to “isn’t” and “you” to “all of you”). Every language has accents and regionalisms that appeal to identity markers of class, age, and race; AI is trained to ignore.
2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr. incorporated AI into his high school English curriculum and considered using AI in a limited capacity in his French classes. But he expressed concerns similar to García about allowing artificial intelligence to take over classroom planning or instruction.
“AI is built from the language of people: a huge community of prejudiced, racist, sexist, trans and homophobic people,” he said. “I worry that we are dooming future generations to be limited to the reach of the early 21st century social justice movement.”
Most language teachers and experts agree that time, intense interest, and motivation are components of language proficiency. But for shy students with an internet connection, an AI bot can be a useful way to get started. Don’t be surprised if native English speakers pause at your slightly mechanical accent.
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