The mind simply cannot serve two masters. The human unconscious mind is far superior, infinitely superior, in the artful process of decoding and understanding the sounds of a foreign language than is the conscious mind. It does so just by hearing and reading it – automatically!
The language teachers of the future will know this. Computers are far inferior to the deeper human mind, and that is why mere language activity facilitators get weak results from really smart kids.
They, of course, refute that and point to bogus results on bogus tests that they write themselves instead of doing the obvious – talking to the kid in the langauge or opening up a book in the target language and having them read from it.
In my opinion, the exciting news about computers in language acquisition is not what they can do, but what they can’t do. As Krashen has said, robots can’t converse. It takes a human being to teach language, or a novel or a poem written by a human being.
Here are some relevant links:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2010/09/17/our-part-is-simply-to-relax/
https://benslavic.com/blog/2010/08/21/aligning-with-krashen/
https://benslavic.com/blog/2010/08/12/you-lost-me-at-how-are-you/
https://benslavic.com/blog/2010/06/21/the-unconscious-mind-is-wonderfully-set-up/
https://benslavic.com/blog/2010/07/18/we-learn-languages-unconsciously-2/
https://benslavic.com/blog/2010/07/19/we-learn-languages-unconsciously/
https://benslavic.com/blog/2007/10/25/carl-jung/
The Problem with CI
Jeffrey Sachs was asked what the difference between people in Norway and in the U.S. was. He responded that people in Norway are happy and
