Воттакой нердинарный взгляд на професию преподавателя иностранного языка

By Simon Barne

The writing is on the wall for language teachers. As I have asserted before, within twenty years wearable voice translators (rudimentary at present) will be as common as mobile phones. Only a few eggheads will bother to learn foreign languages. Why spend years in dingy classroom struggling with the present perfect if you can effortlessly talk to foreigners right way?

Your interlocutor will speak in Indonesian/Welsh, etc, and a little in your ear will say, Ï really feel life is like we’re here, right for some kind of, you know, like it’s meant, know what I’m saying? On second thoughts, perhaps the new technology won’t be such a good idea. Nevertheless, when it arrives, language schools will go bankrupt. Teachers will be unemployed. Books on humanistic teaching and the lexical approach will be shoved into library basements alongside dusty tomes on phrenology and Tractarianism. Naturally you think I am joking. The people least like to recognize the obsolescence of a profession and its members. The first bulky and expensive pocket calculators caused derision among slide rule manufacturers. Candlestick-makers sad the electric light bulb would never catch on and semaphorists were skeptical about wireless telegraphy. Avenators, bowyers, burnmen, chaloners, daunsels, dudders, fletchers, fullers, garcifers, latouners, nedders, orramen, pirnwinders, puddlers, safernmen, sifkers, spurriers, sword-cutters and whitesmiths pooh-poohed the jeremiahs who suggested new technology might somehow impinge on their livelihoods.
The International Association of Peruke-Makers, for instance, had their own journal, Peruke Making Professional, and conferences in coastal towns, at whish bores would stress the importance of fitting the wig o the “whole wearer”. Nobody ever wondered if perukes might one day go out of fashion.
Instead of languages, schools will have to teach a few remaining skills that computers cannot appropriate. Like sex. “OK class, now get together in pairs.” A few teachers may be lucky enough to find jobs as museum exhibits. Visitors will peer into a classroom full of students gossiping in their mother tongues, while outside the teachers the teacher is having a cigarette and telling the DOS, It’s good for them to be left alone sometimes. It stops the class becoming too teacher oriented.”
Personally I am resigned to a penniless and nostalgic old age. Youngsters will ask, “Hey, granddad, did people actually learn foreign languages in those days?” And I will ruminate for a moment , then say, “Well, sort of”.

[Readers unfamiliar with the above and their outdated professions might enjoy a visit to http://www.cpcug.org/user/jlacombe/terms.html]