For generations of students, learning a foreign language began with memorized phrases and grammar drills. At a research university in Shenzhen, southern China, that model is now being put to the test — and the verdict, so far, is that machines may soon do the job better.
The Shenzhen University of Advanced Technology (SUAT), a research institution focused on science and technology, has begun phasing out traditional English courses for part of its student body, replacing them with classes in intercultural communication. The experiment was announced this summer by Zhao Wei, the university’s vice-president, whose argument boils down to a single question: why devote so much time to learning a language when a machine can now interpret almost instantaneously?
Translation in Your Ear
In remarks published on the university’s social media channels, Zhao described a conversation between two people wearing earpieces. One speaks English and the other hears a Chinese translation; the second replies in Chinese, and that reply can be rendered in Spanish. The scenario, once the stuff of science fiction, is now commercially available.
SUAT does not intend to abandon language and cultural education altogether. Under the pilot program, conventional English classes are to give way gradually to intercultural communication courses, in which students study Chinese and Western cultures and learn to engage with foreign interlocutors. The goal is less to stop communicating with the rest of the world than to shift what is taught: if a machine can translate words, the university wants to spend more time on what it handles less well — cultural differences and the unspoken codes that surround a conversation.
A Broader Debate Over English in China
The decision remains a single institution’s experiment, but it lands amid a much wider argument about the role of English in China. In September, Tang Jiafeng, a Chinese mathematics professor, set off a significant discussion on social media by proposing that English learning be made optional in the country’s schools.
Such a proposal would amount to a small revolution. Since China’s opening-up policy in the late 1970s, English has been treated as one of three core subjects, alongside Chinese and mathematics, and it carries substantial weight in the gaokao, the exam that determines university admission.
Can Machines Really Capture a Language?
The case made in Shenzhen rests on a genuine technological shift. Machine translation is no longer confined to typing a sentence into software and waiting for written output. Systems can now recognize spoken conversation, translate it and deliver the result with minimal delay.
But translating a conversation is not the same as understanding it in every dimension. Context, humor, implication, culture-specific expressions and even the way a sentence is spoken can all alter its meaning. That is precisely the paradox of the Shenzhen experiment: the university leans on advances in automated translation to reduce traditional English instruction, while insisting that students still learn the cultural codes essential to any real conversation.
Critics Warn of a Widening Gap
Opponents of scaling back English also raise a social argument. Cinderella Huang, an English teacher in Guangdong province, told The New York Times that wealthier families will continue to pay for private tutors or send their children to international schools. For children from less privileged households, public education is sometimes the main route to learning the language.
English also remains particularly useful for studying at many foreign universities, working at international companies, or gaining direct access to a vast body of scientific and digital content.
The question now being asked in China may eventually be asked elsewhere: if translation tools keep improving, should students still spend as much time learning to speak a foreign language — or more time understanding the culture and the people who speak it?
