[Feature: Rethinking English Education] Roundtable Discussion: What Kind of "Language" Learning Becomes Important in the AI Era?

Today, I would like to talk with you all on the theme of "Thinking about English Education."

In Japan, there have been a great variety of discussions regarding English education for over 150 years. While English education is primarily language education, it is also deeply related to Japan's role and position in the world, as well as the state of politics, economy, culture, and science and technology. Furthermore, there are situations where English is used to obtain information from overseas or to think about culture, and other cases where it is actually used to negotiate and debate. Thus, the purposes of English education and the environments in which English is used are truly diverse.

As long as we live in a Japanese-language environment, not all citizens will use English for work or daily life every day. However, it is by no means the case that we can respond to today's globalizing and internationalizing society with Japanese alone. I believe this situation has not changed since the time Yukichi Fukuzawa turned Keio University into a school for English studies because Dutch was no longer sufficient for communication.

English has also become an extremely important subject in university entrance examinations, not only in Japan, but some point out that studying English as an exam subject is not very well connected to actual "English proficiency."

English learning now begins in elementary school, but what kind of development is desired? Especially in the transition from high school to university, while various possibilities for high school-university articulation are being explored, what specific principles and practices can be considered? Furthermore, as the rapidly spreading use of AI is having a major impact on the human linguistic environment, how should we think about English education?

I believe you all have various experiences regarding English education, English education policy, English for Japanese people, and intercultural understanding. I would like you to start by speaking about these, including a self-introduction.

A long time ago, I studied Chinese language and history in the Oriental History department at Keio, and after various turns, I am now teaching English as business communication at the Keio Business School.

I have used English in business, but when I went to study in the United States, I struggled because I couldn't express my thoughts well in English. I also wondered why the English education I had received until then wasn't useful. On the other hand, while living in the UK for about 16 years and seeing my children study in British schools, I learned that English is incredibly rich and interesting, and that there are ways of learning it that are completely different from Japanese English education.

I want Japanese people to become more capable of speaking to the world using English. I wondered if I could teach in a way that helps with that, and as one option, I incorporate the idea of "English as a lingua franca"—that is, prioritizing being easy for people around the world to understand rather than using native English as the norm.

I spent from age 4 to 7 in the UK, and from age 7 to 17 in New York. I am a graduate of Keio Academy of New York, where I currently teach.

With this background, my image of English learning is like working backwards. In other words, for grammatical items such as articles, comparatives, and relative pronouns, I learned the logic after already being able to use them, and then taught them to students, so I think it's a special case.

What I am always conscious of in class is authenticity, and I want students to come into contact with the real thing. I was particularly conscious of having them read original texts as much as possible when I was teaching at Keio Senior High School (Jukuko).

I teach English and intercultural communication at Keio's Faculty of Letters. In addition, I teach English listening practice, academic writing, and intercultural communication at the Keio Business School, the Correspondence Courses, and the Faculty of Economics CEMS program. I am originally from the US, but I have lived in Japan for 27 years.

When I teach English, I take an approach that creates synergy between intercultural communication and the liberal arts.

In terms of my English experience, I was probably best at English in my early childhood (laughs). I was in North America for about three years from around age one, and I was in an English-speaking environment until nursery school and kindergarten. However, after returning to Japan, I lost my English in no time, and I have struggled with how to recover what I lost.

After that, it was much later that I lived abroad; I went to the UK to write my doctoral dissertation and studied there for about three and a half years. Since then, I have been in Japan. So, my encounter with English feels very halfway.

Even after that, my exploration on the boundaries continued; my study abroad destination was the UK, but my dissertation was on the American poet Wallace Stevens, and while I say my specialty is 20th-century poetry, I actually work on novels and Japanese literature as well. However, I have always been interested in words and linguistics, so even now I am attempting various works at the intersection of language and literature.

A common and familiar theme is "I want to speak, but I can't." Ms. Takino, what are your thoughts on this?

I think "I want to speak, but I can't" is something many people feel, but I also think it's only natural.

In other words, if you try to speak suddenly without practicing speaking or listening in English, you won't be able to do it immediately. I think a place to train to use what you have learned in school education is absolutely necessary. One factor is that the expectation itself—that because you learned it in school, you will suddenly become fluent—is too high.

So, the question is where in English education that place for training should be. I believe that the university should provide a place where students who want to use English can "practice using" it according to their interests, and I conduct my classes with that in mind.

Instead of rejecting the school English learned so far, it's about how to use it well and connect it to what you want to express—bridging the gap between English learned in school and English used in the real world. Many Japanese people often don't know in what situations and how English is used abroad, or what skills are necessary. Therefore, if we teach and train them by saying, "There are situations like this," students who have studied English in Japan will also become able to use English.

However, it is difficult to become able to do everything in English, and language is quite a formidable thing. Therefore, I believe that what should be done at the university is to train while being conscious of the usage suited to each faculty, assuming that the way English is used differs depending on the faculty.

I see. Mr. Yamamoto, you have experience at Keio Senior High School and other schools; how do you feel about this issue?

The affiliated schools of Keio University, including the high school, are making various efforts. However, there are inevitably physical and time constraints. For example, at the high school, we divide students into two levels: standard and advanced. The advanced classes stay at around 20 students, but the standard classes inevitably end up with about 35. In the midst of conducting 50-minute classes several times a week with that many people, it is quite difficult to secure enough practice time for listening, speaking, and so on.

Conversely, I would like to ask all of you: while you are teaching at universities or graduate schools, what parts do you wish students would work on while they are in high school?

For one, I would like them to train their "listening ability." I believe listening ability is the foundation for everything. Regarding "reading," you can do it while looking things up in a dictionary, but you can't look things up while "listening," so your current ability is reflected directly.

It takes time to get your ears used to the sounds of English, so if you don't have listening skills, it's hard to keep up with university classes. I often teach discussion, and even if students become able to express their opinions there, listening ability is absolutely necessary for the exchange of talk within a group. So, I would definitely like them to develop their listening ability to some extent by the high school level.

That is certainly true.

Professor Abe, what is your experience teaching at the University of Tokyo?

I think what Ms. Takino said is exactly right. In other words, you can't do it if you haven't practiced. However, some people talk as if making the TOEFL an entrance exam subject would suddenly make students able to speak when they wake up in the morning, like some kind of magic potion, which surprises me.

What's important here is that people tend to go toward total negation, saying Japanese English education is useless because people can't speak, but we must first remember the issues of the Japanese language and the environment of Japanese speakers. Since there are very few opportunities to encounter English in daily life in Japan, you could say there is no switch to change modes to another language on a daily basis in the first place.

For example, people living in Europe who encounter three or four languages daily are naturally prepared to convert switches between languages and have little resistance to the mode of another language. In the case of Japanese speakers, that sense of resistance is very strong.

Furthermore, comparing Japanese and English, Japanese has fewer types of sounds, and the sounds used in English feel more subdivided, so pronunciation is naturally difficult. Therefore, it can't be helped that Japanese speakers struggle with English pronunciation compared to speakers of other languages and don't improve easily. There's no need to have a strange complex about it, and it's not that English education is bad.

The biggest issue is rhythm; the stress accent of English is completely different from the rhythm of Japanese, and that is the bottleneck. Moreover, many people are unaware of this. They simply think, "I can't catch the words!" or "My pronunciation isn't going well!" So, I think they would make great progress if they consciously got used to stress accents.

However, connecting to what Mr. Yamamoto said, I think it's quite difficult to just do listening intensely in high school classes. You can't become able to listen without spending a massive amount of time. Since people learning English as a second language inevitably need grammatical knowledge, schools need to have them master orthodox areas like grammar and basic vocabulary. I think it might be good to have them think about utilizing home study or devices for listening.

Therefore, rather than specializing in speaking or listening, my opinion from the standpoint of a university faculty member is that I want them to acquire basic physical strength—the "core" of English. Especially in the last 10 or 20 years, there are many students who haven't been able to do this. There are often cases where I think it's a waste because their level of intelligence is high.

This is quite an interesting discussion, but the debate over whether to prioritize "reading and writing" or "listening and speaking" education also often comes up in English education. What are your thoughts on this?

"Reading and writing" is easy to teach, and "reading" in particular is easy to evaluate, so I think there is a part where it becomes an excess of "reading and writing," which is relatively easy in terms of handling volume.

However, the skills students want to acquire are often "listening and speaking" skills, and they tend to downplay the power of "reading and writing," so there is always a conflict.

What Keio Academy of New York is blessed with is that all classes except for Japanese (National Language) and Japanese History are conducted in English, so "reading and writing" and "listening and speaking" education in English can be done horizontally across other subjects. Students who can fully utilize this environment are improving their English skills. I think it's a completely different matter how far that can be done in schools in Japan, though.

As you say, what we must consider now is how people whose first language is Japanese learn English while living in Japan. In other words, living in an English-speaking country and taking all classes in English while learning about English is, in short, the same as Americans who grow up in an English environment.

Then, as for Japanese schools following the policies of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, there is that notorious constraint of "let's conduct English classes in English," but this is completely different from conducting English classes in English at the New York school. In Japan, school teachers are often not used to speaking in English, and students might end up thinking, "I can't even understand the teacher's English." How much meaning is there in English classes conducted in such a situation?

On the other hand, what I have been worried about lately is that while the intellectual level of Japanese junior and senior high school students is high and they can read quite sophisticated things in Japanese, the content of English communication textbooks is extremely poor, and students immediately lose interest.

It's a pity that the content inevitably becomes thin when it comes to conversation classes. I don't intend to completely deny the attempt to do oral practice practically, but I want to introduce them to English in a way that stimulates the students' intelligence a bit better. If we do that, they will feel a stronger desire to read something in English or to encounter the world while studying English. I think this can be done even with an oral focus.

Also, I think it's surprisingly important for children who grew up with Japanese to experience "not understanding" to some extent when they encounter English.

In other words, I want them to experience to some degree that foreign languages are things that are not understood. The method of "getting used to it rather than understanding it" might be mainstream now, but it is also important to think about things you don't understand, like "Why do they say it like this?" or "By what mechanism is this kind of way of saying or thinking possible?" I feel that such a perspective is being lost now.

I think what you just said is exactly right. My daughters attend local schools, and at first, they were tossed about in rough seas, understanding almost nothing.

Looking at English education in Japan, it feels like swimming in a pool. However, I think learning a language is actually closer to going out to sea and swimming naked. So it's painful at first, and learning a language is a very time-consuming task, but I also think that way you encounter more dynamic and interesting things, and intellectual curiosity increases, so it lasts longer.

Teaching at the university, I am also surprised that many students have the sense that they haven't heard or read something unless they look up every single word and understand the details. Understanding details is important, but the ability to understand the gist while there are parts you don't understand is also important.

No matter how good you get at English, there will be parts you can't catch and parts you don't understand. I want students to feel that searching for meaning within that—thinking "Does it mean this?"—is indispensable in a foreign language. As just mentioned, I also think we can incorporate more ways of learning where students develop their English skills through trial and error while there are things they don't understand, in addition to learning in a protected environment.

Hearing the discussion so far, what do you think, Professor Komisarof?

In English education, "reading and writing" and "listening and speaking" are often discussed as two separate approaches, but I believe it is also important to approach all four skills of "reading," "writing," "speaking," and "listening."

In the classes I conduct at Keio, I have students read about the topic to be covered in class beforehand. Students engage with the text and must write a short essay on their thoughts related to that topic. This allows students to practice reading and writing skills. In this way, students get used to some of the vocabulary that will appear in class and have the opportunity to state their opinions on the ideas to be discussed.

Then, in class, we often do speaking practice, mini-lectures, and discussions in small groups or as a whole class. These help students develop their speaking and listening skills. Sometimes, as a follow-up, we do further writing practice on the same topic after class to develop their thoughts on the issue.

Also, in English education, it is important to help students deepen their intercultural understanding. To explain this, we first need to define what intercultural communication is.

For example, a friend's son majored in intercultural communication at university for four years. During those four years, he mainly learned about the French language, French history, and art and famous landmarks related to France. However, if all he learned was history and art, that alone might not be enough to communicate effectively with French people.

A very important distinction in intercultural communication is the difference between culture that can be immediately perceived with the five senses and invisible, abstract culture that cannot be perceived with the five senses.

The former type of culture is, for example, food or music. You can immediately taste differences in food, and you can immediately hear differences in music.

However, there are also many invisible aspects of culture that cannot be immediately perceived with the five senses. For example, "values" and "common sense" cannot be tasted, touched, or heard. To communicate well with people from different cultural backgrounds, it is very important to understand these invisible aspects of culture.

This is an area I would like to see more recognized and taught in Japanese English education. This is because invisible aspects of culture that are not easily recognized are usually the cause of the most misunderstandings in intercultural communication. People are often not even aware that there is a difference there.

Another very important distinction is culture-general knowledge and culture-specific knowledge. For example, learning about one culture, like France, is wonderful, but that alone does not provide a framework for understanding people with various cultures.

We can also look more broadly at communication styles across cultures. That is, there are concepts that explain various types of communication styles across more than one culture. In Japanese education, it is important to pay more attention to the invisible aspects of culture and general frameworks of culture so that students can understand people all over the world, not just the specific culture they are studying there.

Of the two types of culture Professor Komisarof just mentioned, I think the one that is easier to teach in a classroom is a world that is complete as a system. For example, understanding the rules of rugby in English or understanding medical sciences are things that are completed at a desk, so even if they are abstract, they are surprisingly suitable for doing in a classroom.

On the other hand, English using the five senses—that is, English where the body is involved—cannot be learned unless you are actually involved in it. It is very difficult to do that in a Japanese school. No matter how much you artificially set the scene, it lacks reality and doesn't stick. Doing "Let's buy a ticket at Disneyland" or "Let's find the location of a restaurant" in a classroom makes it hard for motivation to arise.

I think the emphasis is currently shifting too much toward physical English. Since students are going to the trouble of learning at school, I also want to train their ability to understand abstract things. I think we can consider doing physical English in a different place.

Culture perceivable by the five senses and culture that is not—that's important. Sometimes things that should be felt with the five senses end up becoming pseudo-experiences.

I think it's important to start from concrete experiences and connect them to more abstract concepts. This is one of the processes in Kolb's experiential learning cycle.

Let's take Disneyland as an example. For instance, Disneyland Paris has a FastPass system like Japan's, but the way it works is very different. When I went, that system in Paris was chaotic and not working well. But in fact, no one cared even if the FastPass machines were broken. It would be different in Japan, wouldn't it?

In this way, by looking at concrete experiences at Disneyland in Paris and Tokyo, we can help students connect them with abstract and very important values and common sense in culture that they encountered at a deeper level.

In this way, depending on the students' interests, we start from concrete experiences and connect them to more abstract differences and concepts, so that students can have more general ideas about cultural differences.

If we start from concrete experiences that can be connected to abstract concepts, we can have students think about how those concepts help them understand intercultural experiences, and we can teach them skills on how to act in unexpected new situations in the future.

Now, I think the measurement of academic ability inevitably involves English education. That is, evaluation. That also leads to the motivation of the learner. Mr. Yamamoto, what are your thoughts on that?

It's difficult, isn't it? To use the same excuse again, there is a constraint in the school setting where we have to look at a certain number of people at once.

Recalling my experience when I first started teaching English, I was first surprised that language is something taught using a point-deduction system. If you go along saying this grammatical item is wrong, an article is missing, or this spelling is wrong, that becomes a kind of fairness.

At the affiliated schools of Keio University, it's a bit more relaxed, or rather, there are many places where we overlook things and praise them, and I felt the range of measurement is wide. Partly because we are not bound by university entrance exams, I think it's a very good thing.

However, if it's only this, things like accuracy will be lost, so how to balance that is always discussed among teachers. It's a conversation like, "This is important after all," versus "But it gets the point across, so isn't it fine?" I feel that how far to maintain this balance at the high school stage is, in the end, a major issue related to the measurement of English proficiency.

That is an extremely important issue. In short, it's a question of what constitutes having mastered a language. This connects to the urgent issue I am currently facing: how to measure the academic ability of people in the humanities.

You could say that academic ability in the sciences can be measured to some extent by mathematics and physics. On the other hand, for the humanities, it has been believed until now that academic ability can generally be measured by Japanese and English. And while it's hard to create a gap in Japanese, English has been valued as an entrance exam subject because it's quite useful for creating a gap.

However, currently, when people whose first language is English or bilingual people who graduated from international schools apply from overseas, the question arises as to whether it's right to give them the same English exam and compare them.

For example, the current University of Tokyo entrance exam includes English-to-Japanese translation, so surprisingly, even bilingual people might find it difficult. On the other hand, for things like the TOEFL, it's obvious that people closer to native speakers can get points more easily. But the TOEFL and such, rather than looking at the ability to think through English, check operational ability within a narrowed range. While it's good for measuring basic operational ability, it probably doesn't see into the core of linguistic ability directly connected to the power to think for continuing studies after entering university.

In the first place, is it enough for linguistic ability to aim only for the mastery of a specific language? Just as in the case of mathematics, I think there is such a thing as a foundational linguistic ability. That cannot be measured by the degree of mastery of a specific language, such as whether one knows many kanji. I think we need indicators to measure language-related power that is not subsumed under so-called English or Japanese.

That might be the literacy of information, such as paraphrasing the structure of one system into another system or clearly explaining a single complex phenomenon. It's like the ability for abstraction and concretization that transcends individual languages. I think it's necessary to identify that in order to measure the kind of ability that can be called humanities. In the future, language-related exams will change, or should change, in that way.

I am also feeling exactly what Mr. Abe just mentioned every single day. Especially when teaching things like discussion, I strongly feel that "evaluation based on scores is simply impossible." For example, I feel the need to include not just the ability to speak English fluently without mistakes, but also the content of what is said and the structure of the delivery in the evaluation.

To be honest, I think that at least from the university level onwards, attempting to measure language ability by a single standard is inherently flawed. In other words, language is naturally very difficult to measure, and evaluation criteria differ depending on the purpose for which English is being used and what the priorities are. There are so many axes of evaluation—such as whether to give a higher rating to someone who speaks beautiful language or someone who speaks easy-to-understand language—that there is no end to it.

Therefore, rather than assigning scores, I think it would be good to have a more flexible qualitative evaluation, at least at the university level, such as saying, "You are doing well in this direction."

I took an IELTS assessment course in the UK, and I was always arguing with the British instructors. The British instructors emphasized whether the English conformed to British English norms, while I actively evaluated presentations with excellent content and structure, so our scores were significantly different (laughs).

I really want Japanese people to develop English communication skills that emphasize content. When trying to convey one's thoughts more accurately, I think many challenges in communication skills are common to both English and Japanese.

At the Keio Faculty of Letters, we evaluate all first- and second-year students using an English placement test at the beginning of every academic year. Students are divided into their respective classes based on their performance on this test.

The test itself traditionally consisted of sections on reading, comprehension, grammar, and vocabulary. However, recently, we have started using a listening test developed independently by the Faculty of Letters. When students know that their listening ability is being evaluated, they seem to feel the need to develop their listening skills.

Also, something I have been doing since I was teaching at a Japanese high school in 1990 is an interview test. Even if it is only for three or four minutes, I meet with the students and evaluate their speaking ability. At that time, I tell the students in advance what they need to study. These are various topics we have worked on throughout the semester. I ask the students questions, and they must show me that they can discuss those topics well using the grammatical structures and vocabulary I have taught.

In this way, we use various methods to test four different skills in English, including skills that were not traditionally tested much, such as speaking and listening.

Measuring English proficiency can indeed be quantified if you look at one aspect of it, but at the same time, perspectives and scales vary considerably depending on the student's motivation and potential, or in what kind of situation the English proficiency is being measured. Circumstances such as whether it is for an entrance exam, everyday ability, or whether it differs by faculty will also be relevant.

Now, I would like to think about the future vision for English education. Let's have everyone talk about the future image of English education that you have in mind.

As I already feel, I believe that English education is no longer something that takes place only inside the classroom. There are various tools such as apps, and there are so many things like pronunciation, listening, and grammar that can be learned outside the classroom. I believe that schools should move in a direction where they facilitate these things.

I think this should be spearheaded in environments like the Keio University affiliated schools, where there is a certain degree of freedom to implement educational practices.

In an environment where children who can grow are able to do so rapidly, there are many technologies that leap over the limits of teachers and the limits of classroom time. I think the best direction is to figure out how to make use of them.

For example, at Jukuko (Keio Senior High School), there are systems for studying abroad during high school, but what are your thoughts on that?

At Jukuko and other affiliated schools, there are students who return from even short-term study abroad in English-speaking countries with their eyes opened. There are students with a high sense of pride in a good way, who think, "My English didn't get through, alright, I'm going to do this," so I think we should increase that across the entire university. I am also involved in the exchange programs conducted at all Keio University affiliated schools, and the students who are sent abroad grow significantly.

I believe that what Mr. Yamamoto said is even more true at the university level. In other words, the English education and English communication practice that can be done in university classes is limited and is only a very small part; it is necessary for students to autonomously continue diverse practice over a long period of time.

Thinking about fields of interest or how one relates to English leads to motivation. I am in a business school where goals are very clearly defined, so I try to foster interest in English by having students do practical exercises to solve work challenges using English.

If you are motivated, there are truly inexhaustible methods, and there is an infinite amount of material for listening to English in videos. I believe it is important for students to take an interest in English, find a point of contact with themselves, and discover that it is interesting to delve deeply into a field they are interested in using English.

That is exactly right. Mr. Komisarof, what do you think?

I believe it is important to give positive feedback on what students have done well, and I think there is still a lot of work to be done.

To give an example from my own experience learning foreign languages, my least favorite subject in high school was French. The reason was that every time I took a quiz, it was returned to me full of mistakes corrected in red ink.

Therefore, when I first came to Japan in 1990, I didn't want to learn Japanese because I didn't want to repeat my experience with French. However, I realized that I couldn't communicate deeply with many people unless I learned the local language, so I started studying Japanese.

I was so happy to learn words and expressions like "Yoroshiku onegaishimasu," which are completely different in terms of sound from any English word, and moreover, when I said them, people understood me. I felt joy in being able to express myself using the sounds of a foreign language. And when people spoke to me, I felt great joy that I could sometimes understand what they were saying, and I soon became passionate about learning Japanese.

Thanks to this experience, I eventually changed my mind about French, grew to love learning it, and have continued studying it to this day.

All of this came from realizing how fun it is to communicate in a foreign language when your words get through and you understand what others are saying, reading, and writing.

It is very important to focus on this "joy" in language education. This is similar to how liberal arts education focuses on finding the joy of learning—the joy of exploring problems and ideas.

English is not just about learning grammar rules or memorizing vocabulary. What we need to nurture is the joy of communication. If we can share that joy with students, I think English education is a success. Although that is not an easy thing to do.

I completely agree with what everyone is saying. I think the first thing we feel in a language is probably the sound of the foreign language. In other words, it's impossible to be moved by reading something you can't read, but sounds can be heard even if you don't understand the meaning at all, so interest is piqued by something sounding beautiful or feeling out of place. Therefore, I think it's important to first encounter words through sound. After that, it becomes a process of coming to like it through various methods, or taking an interest and identifying with the language, and increasingly entering and acquiring that language.

On the other hand, looking to the future, our basic way of engaging with language may change. This is because AI is starting to take over the part of identifying with English. It may become possible to use a language without having any interest in it at all.

Then, in the future, how we distance ourselves from language will also become important. When an era arrives where we have no choice but to engage with language through the medium of machines, it will become necessary to acquire a mode of engaging with language from the perspective of a kind of manager who judges whether the AI is actually functioning.

There, differences in the media nature of each language also arise. For example, if we were to transcribe the Japanese from today's roundtable discussion, I think it wouldn't be readable unless it was corrected considerably. But Mr. Komisarof's English would probably make sense as is.

In other words, in Japanese, there is a tendency to try to speak in sync with the other person, and when doing so, people tend to speak in a broken way on purpose. Speaking fluently and eloquently can actually sound strange. On the other hand, English sounds strange unless you speak with proper syntax. In English, the spoken and written word are close. There is little divergence between the rhetoric of written and spoken language. However, in Japanese, formal conventions regarding speaking have still not sufficiently taken root. This creates a gap between spoken and written language. Such environmental differences are important.

I think a perspective that can overlook such situations cannot be taken without having distance from the language. In that sense, doing a third language is very interesting. Even if you can't master it, just touching upon it or listening to the sounds, if we let junior high and high school students try it, they might develop an attitude of "taking distance."

If we leave everything to AI, humans will only degenerate, and unexpected mistakes may occur. A way of engaging where humans skillfully control it will definitely be necessary. Then, a bird's-eye view of language will become more important than it is now, so I feel that in the future, we will be training that kind of ability.

Mr. Abe has linked the future vision of English education with the topic of AI, the utilization of which is currently advancing rapidly.

I would like to think a little more about that coexistence with AI. I think this ranges from the practical level to the linguistic creativity of AI and humans, but what do you think?

I specialize in business English, and in business, using AI is becoming commonplace. Therefore, the expected values for English are already changing. In other words, if you made a spelling or grammar mistake, it used to be excused because "it's not your native language," but now it's becoming, "Why didn't you use a spell checker? This is sloppy work." Therefore, I believe that developing English skills while using AI is already essential.

Secondly, as Mr. Abe mentioned, from now on, the ability to act as a manager—how to use the English output created by AI, or what kind of prompts to give to AI—will be required. However, evaluating the English produced by AI requires considerable English proficiency. So, in a sense, there is a high possibility that the required English proficiency will become even higher.

Then, I think people will be divided into those who learn English to a level where they can master AI, and those who don't want to learn English that much and think they can just leave it to AI if necessary. I think that's fine. Right now, English is partly like an ordeal that everyone must do, so I think an era may come where people can choose and learn a foreign language they like, assuming the use of AI.

One more thing, and this applies to myself as well, but English text of a level of perfection that previously would have taken time to refine and required a native speaker to check can now be done in 10 minutes by consulting with AI. Therefore, I believe this is valuable as a tool for people who use English as a non-native language to become independent.

Amidst these changes, I believe we have entered an era of searching for a different type of English training than before.

While I think the current talk is very interesting, as a teacher of high school and below, I have a sense that it might also entrench a kind of cheating, or looking for shortcuts. Conversely, as the speed of change in the world becomes incredibly fast, I also think we can't afford to say such things.

When a child learning English for the first time always says "Good" and wants to use a slightly different word, if you ask if it's bad to use AI, it's not bad, but the line is difficult to draw, so it's something I find troubling.

There is a tension between the idea of using AI as part of English education and the idea of not using it. Using AI, for example, students can generate texts on specific topics and practice reading them. AI can also be used as a conversation partner for role-playing practice.

There are also many useful educational writing tools using AI that are often used by teachers in the US. This has students divide writing into three stages: pre-writing, essay writing, and editing. Many teachers seem to allow students to use AI in pre-writing when brainstorming ideas to write about.

However, in the stage that is the core of essay writing, where students actually organize, develop, and express their own thoughts, most teachers ask students to do it on their own. Otherwise, it is considered cheating. This is one way of structuring AI in English education.

However, I take a different approach. I do not allow students to use AI. I tell students that I want them to make mistakes and learn from them. When a student makes a mistake, I try to discuss it and identify the correct grammar and the reason why it is used. Students can also learn better vocabulary choices by identifying synonyms that better fit a particular context.

By doing so, students can learn how to correct their own English and become excellent writers, rather than leaving everything to AI. This is important because humans must ultimately check what AI has generated and confirm whether the content is truly appropriate and correct.

I'll share one short anecdote I found in the University of Pennsylvania student newspaper this morning. A student wrote an opinion piece saying that in their classes, students are losing the ability to think because they rely too much on AI. For example, when a teacher asks a question in class, students run that question through AI before answering the teacher. But by doing that, students are losing the opportunity to generate their own ideas and discuss them frankly.

For these reasons, I personally do not let students use AI in class.

I think it's probably a matter of drawing a line at something like the stage of growth. In other words, just like drinking and smoking, there is a certain line, and if AI dependency becomes high at too young an age, problems tend to arise. However, in actual society, one has no choice but to use AI, so conversely, being an AI illiterate is a problem. I think it's a matter of where to strike that balance.

I think motivation ultimately becomes important. We "go out of our way" to use words. Just because cars were invented doesn't mean we stopped running, right? It's the same as that; I think we will probably continue to go out of our way to write and speak ourselves, despite the existence of AI.

At that time, I want people to know the joy of going out of our way to speak, or rather, the feeling of going out of our way when writing an article, publishing a book, or speaking. I might be an old-fashioned type too, but I feel this is the motivation when I teach in class.

The other day, when I was talking to a researcher who had just returned from Oxford, the topic came up that Japanese might also be in a fairly critical situation. In various fields, loanwords are used as katakana, but Japanese people use them without much understanding, and in some cases, they appear in Japanese with the English katakana pronunciation. For example, "compliance" appears frequently.

This relates to the problem of translated words—for example, whether "Society" is really the same as the Japanese "shakai," or whether the concept is truly grasped when "Individual" is translated as "kojin"—or even more fundamental problems of conceptual definition through language. Fukuzawa used to apply translated terms somewhat impatiently, such as "hito-onoono," "hitori no tami," or "dokko-kojin no kisho" for "Individual" or "Individuality."

The problem of English at Keio will also include things like this. In such a context, Keio has the strength of being able to handle comprehensive education from elementary school to university and graduate school. With that in mind, what are your thoughts on Keio University and future English education?

I believe that the strength of Keio University is the system of elementary, junior high, high school, and university, rather than just high school and university. With two elementary schools, three junior high schools, and five high schools, if the vertical and horizontal connections are made, I think it will become something more three-dimensional.

Currently, there are parts where that works well and parts where it doesn't. There are many English teachers across the affiliated schools as a whole, but I think English education at Keio University could work together more closely.

I think one of the goals for teachers at affiliated schools is, after all, to connect students to the university. The difference in the English required by each faculty that Ms. Takino mentioned is exactly right; the English required by the Faculty of Science and Technology is different from the English required by the Faculty of Letters or the Faculty of Economics, but in reality, we are sending them to the university without being very conscious of that.

From now on, I would like to contribute more to English education at Keio University from the standpoint of the affiliated schools as well.

Ms. Takino, what about business English and a message to the approximately 400,000 Keio University alumni?

First, I want to convey that English is changing very much right now. The way English is used in the world itself is changing, the environment for learning English is changing, and the tools that help learning are changing significantly.

In such a situation, if those who have been graduated for a while think about doing English again, I hope they will broaden their horizons and look for learning methods that are different from what they learned during their university days.

Nowadays, there are many opportunities to directly hear English actually spoken outside of Japan, so I think you can enjoy studying English if you have a concrete image of how you want to use it—such as wanting to use English in this kind of world or wanting to try using this kind of English—and express things you are interested in using English.

For those who clearly know their purpose, such as wanting to use it for this kind of work, there are methods that allow for straightforward study, so I hope you will try various things and find a learning method that suits you.

Overall, I am very satisfied with the English education provided at Keio University. Because it offers a very wide range of courses, in almost all the faculties I know, students can take classes that suit their interests.

In Keio's faculties, there are many teachers who have studied cross-cultural communication and incorporate cross-cultural communication research into their English courses. On the other hand, at the graduate level, there is no program majoring in cross-cultural communication.

Therefore, I would really like to see a research institute for cross-cultural communication, a graduate program in cross-cultural communication, or at least individual classes offered at the master's and doctoral levels.

I understand well. I would like to establish Cross-cultural Communication as a common system across all graduate schools.

Mr. Abe, I imagine you have various difficulties within the University of Tokyo as well.

From now on, universities are being told to earn more, and regardless of whether the humanities earn or not, there is very strong pressure to increase research capabilities. At that time, it's a matter of how experts involved in language will do their best. In fact, Professor Harada and I are involved in literary language, but we are at a bit of a disadvantage. There are parts where people around us don't easily accept how much we are being useful to society.

However, if you think about it, there has never been an era where language has such a large presence in society as it does now. For example, wars are breaking out in various parts of the world, and clearly, words are becoming a major weapon. This is not a story about "the pen is mightier than the sword," but language itself becomes a weapon and wars become more intense, or it is someone's statement that moves the economy. Or even in our immediate surroundings, there are people who suffer terrible psychological damage from a slight use of words.

How words are something that is useful but terrifying. I don't think there has ever been an era where we feel this as acutely as now. That is something that people who study language as their main focus must think about.

What we must keep in mind at that time is that language has always changed along with the media. First, language appeared, and it was carved into wood or stone, and the spread of printing technology was only very recent. That has digitized in no time, and now we are in the era of AI. The medium through which we encounter language is completely different depending on the era, and our way of engaging with language changes accordingly.

I feel that the desirable form is to organize that and, if possible, for people involved in language to be able to present a direction that skillfully stops things like the runaway of language in society.

Time has passed in a flash, but I think we have received many very fruitful and important seeds that will lead to future developments.

English education and the problem of language are familiar, like air, and I think there is a tendency to not care much usually, or to think they can be solved very easily. In fact, in both English and Japanese, language is supple and flexible, and although it may be difficult to capture, it will not disappear so easily. However, even an existence like air, once contaminated in a fatal way, becomes an irreversible problem for human society.

Regarding that, it will be necessary for each and every one of us to approach it with a firm awareness. I hope that many of our readers will take an interest in English and in the problem of language.

Thank you very much for today.