u/Joddle_Speaks

In this moment of time, students of English are attempting to cut out the middle man. Instead of employing a teacher, they are using AI speaking apps or chatting with AI. In this post I will explain why it's not a good use of your time to do this.

1. A good English teacher adjusts their language to your level. They simplify when needed and repeat in a different way when your face shows that you don't understand. As a learner of English, you won't know how to get AI to simplify for you at the level you need as this requires constant adjustment. And because you are learning, you can't check the level of English you are receiving from AI. It means you won't know if it is too hard, not useful or unnatural for you.

2. AI provides corrections if you ask it - but this can be overwhelming. An experienced English teacher will focus on correcting only what is important for your level.

3. This one is very important - Speaking with AI will give you a false sense of confidence. A lot of people misunderstand how it works. It 'listens' to you by predicting what you are about to say next because on grammatical signals and what you have already said. Just because it is transcribing what you are saying more or less accurately does not mean a person in real life would understand you.

4. You are not facing your fear of the unknown and unpredictable. In a human interaction, there is always an element of the unexpected. You will encounter moments where you don't understand and need to ask for repetitions. You will likely freeze and experience panic as you search for words. Chatting with AI doesn't help you overcome this so you stay stuck avoiding what you fear and not making progress.

I'm not sure exactly when it happened... Perhaps with the normalisation of AI, but nowadays everyone thinks they can sort out their accent problems without a teacher. Often this means without interacting with a person - for example, by using accent training apps, speaking apps or using AI by yourself.

I get it - when you have a vulnerability, the idea of someone observing you closely and pointing out your errors feels uncomfortable. Of course, we would like to be able to fix things by ourselves or to not need any help whatsoever. We'd also like not to have to pay for it.

But ask yourself how is your progress? Do you even know?

You won't know until you have wasted years on it.

Fed up of being marked as a newcomer after years living in London? If my accent training students have something in common when they start lessons with me, it's that they share the common experience of being asked where they are from in every conversation with someone new they meet. This question bothers them because they want to get passed telling their whole life story at the outset of meeting people, and beneath that they want to feel like they belong. They have the years of effort with English and living in London (usually) to prove it, and they just don't want to talk immediately about the person they used to be.

It might seem like a friendly question at first, but it is one that excludes and makes you feel 'less than', especially when asked in the wrong environment, such as work, when the focus shouldn't be on your life story but your professional role.

Where most people with this pain point go wrong is that they work to teach themselves a British accent by following an app or using AI. Actually, it doesn't matter what you use - using it by yourself will either not be effective or will take you years longer than working with an expert. Lessons available: https://jadejoddle.com