Learning English communication in the age of Artificial Intelligence

Oinam Nabakishore Singh *

My own early education in Manipur was in my own vernacular, Manipuri or Meiteilon medium. Resultantly, my English communication skill till now, in late seventies, despite fairly good exposure to English medium education in the National capital and working there, is far from being good. I am unable to pronounce many English words correctly till now.

It is really difficult to learn correct pronunciation, accents, intonation of a foreign language later in life as the mother tongue acts a barrier to the sounds of foreign language. We have a tendency to speak a foreign language in the way we speak our own mother tongue.

Things have changed for better over the years so far as learning of English in Manipur is concerned. While number of Government schools in the State have been mostly on the decline, the same of private schools have been on the rise in terms of enrolment, quality and performance.

Private schools especially those run by missionaries have used English as a medium of instruction in classrooms. They have also encouraged the student to interact among themselves in English, thereby creating an ecosystem of English in school campus. Most of the students who pass out from such schools have fairly good skills of English communication.

Our family invited applications for recruitment of new teachers for a preschool by issuing advertisement in newspapers, cable TV and Facebook. It is interesting to note that more responses came from the ads given to Facebook, which did not cost much unlike newspaper ads. It proves the power of social media. Since English communication was a precondition, very few candidates applied for the job.

However, to my astonishment, I found almost all the candidates called for the job have unsatisfactory skills of English communication.

When I asked them to narrate to me, supposing that I am a visitor from outside the State, about the crisis in Manipur since the 3rd May, 2023, most of them fumbled finding correct expressions to narrate the story. After several rounds of interviews, I was fortunately able to identify two girls with reasonable good skills in English communication.

It is recognized that command over English language is absolutely necessary to get jobs at call centres, shopping malls, hospitality services in hotels and restaurants, airports and airlines, etc., which generate jobs in good number. In fact, service industry will be the creator of jobs in the future.

Whether one likes it or not, globalization and integration of the people across the globe will lead to sourcing of jobs from places which offer quality services at competitive prices. Manipur is a poor place with a lot of intelligent people. Given an opportunity to learn English, they can easily become fluent in English. With necessary skills of good communication skills, people of Manipur will become more competitive.

A good number of citizens of the Philippines are working in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and many other countries in service industries like hotel reception, banks and shopping malls and many other places for mainly two reasons. They are good at English communication and they are fair and well-groomed.

UAE receives about 20 million foreign tourists from many countries in a year, who are to be catered to at hotels, shopping malls and places of sight-seeing. Main medium of communication is English. In case youths of Manipur have good English communication skills and a little bit of grooming and personality development, it is possible to work abroad on work-permits.

That will be good for the economy of the State and employment. We have seen the story of Kerala for many years, where remittance has helped to boost its economy.

The main question regarding English communication will centre around simple and affordable learning. While beginning to be exposed to English environment right from pre-school at the age upto five years will be greatly helpful for children, it is never too late to emphasize on practicing and mimicking English words and expressions heard in children’s cartoon movies, where one can find clarity in spoken English.

Written English is quite different from spoken English. Grammar may be important for written English and as such the need for learning English grammar. On the other hand, spoken English does not need any study of English grammar.

A native speaker of any mother tongue does not study its grammar. Language is learnt as spoken and heard. It is important for a foreign language learner to hear the conversation or monologue in the presentation of English news. It is also useful to pay full attention to each and every word and expression of English and correlate them to the scenes depicted.

Meaning of word can be easily implied from the actions depicted. Most of the people in Manipur learn speaking Hindi by watching Hindi movies. They are fairly good at Hindi. Same is true of English. While schools and colleges are great places to learn speaking English, there are many other avenues for the same. Browsing the internet for anything and everything is made much more faster and convenient now.

Search engines like Google and Microsoft Bing have integrated artificial intelligence to collect relevant data from the various data storages and present information in precise and comprehensible format to the users.

The meaning of words and idioms as presented by artificial intelligence is much more comprehensive than given by online dictionaries. Google Search engine has been the most popular browser for many years. Its AI assistant is GEMINI, which is readily available.

Microsoft has recently introduced its Artificial intelligence Assistant, Co- pilot. I really enjoy using Copilot to learn a range of things which are not clearly known to me. The meaning of words, phrases and idioms and any other issue under the sun can be searched by using both text and verbal commands. The text or information presen-ted can be heard by clicking on the speaker icon.

In fact, the text is read by artificial intelligence by using Indian English pronunciation, which is more easily intelligible to us. Google now has its accompanying artificial intelligence Chatbox called ‘Gemini’, which works like Copilot of Microsoft. Learning has become much more easy, convenient and comprehensive. Anybody who is interested in learning English must use these chatbox/chatbot, assistants, which come free of cost unlike Chat GPT.

The Google or Microsoft assistants, as they are called, can help anybody including teachers. Globally well-known Youtube Education Channel, Khan Academy, is now integrating artificial intelligence to help both teachers and students. In fact learning any subject is becoming much more easy.

With so many helps available on a smartphone, there is no reason for anyone, especially youths, not to use the applications including artificial intelligence to learn all aspects of a foreign language including slangs. It is considered to be cool/smart if a young man/woman uses slangs in their conversation with his/her peers.

Of course, one is not expected to use slangs in formal settings or in writing. One can hear a lot of slangs in English movies, especially American ones. It is good to pick them up and repeat to oneself many times before using.

The main challenges many people face in speaking English is that they are not able to express fluently and without hesitation. This difficulty is called “tongue-tied” in Manipuri common parlance. It is possible to overcome this difficulty just by loudly repeating the words and expressions, which are read or heard by mimicking the native speakers or those who are good at it.

One must start with baby steps like loudly saying a word. Apparently, English language requires a lot of stress on different syllables in a word unlike Manipur language, where there is little stress on most syllables.

We tend to leave the sounds of many syllables while speaking English, which makes our words not intelligible. There are many videos on Youtube teaching English pronunciation including telling the viewers about the movements of different parts of mouth.

Since a lot of new opportunities will open up with good English communication skill, it makes sense to devote a few hours daily to learn new words, phrases and idioms and expressions by using Youtube, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini and watching English movies, etc. However, watching all these applications without actual practice with oneself or with friends and family will not yield the desired result.

One must not worry too much about advanced vocabulary. One should start with the easiest and simplest expressions and gradually move further towards more advanced ones. Simple words and sentences will be the stepping stones to climb up the ladder. What is required is the will to learn.