By Hong Sun-mi





I have taught many students how to improve not only their English skills but also their teaching skills in Gukje Cyber University as a chief professor of English education department for 13 years. Of course I met many kinds of students and most of them are in Republic of Korea but some of them are in all over the world. It's the merit of cyber education. Recently many foreign students also enter our department. They can speak and write Korean well enough to keep up with the major.



But one of Filipinas who can't speak and write Korean well studied our major using Google translator last year. She achieved above B in 4 courses regardless of my concerns in spring term. I was somewhat surprised and shocked feeling my place as an English professor is getting disappeared owing to IT. By the way last term she got below B in 1 course among 5. She insisted this score can represent her and wanted the second chance to make-up. But I can't help her because the semester is finished. She couldn't accept that scores and was afraid of being evaluated with that. I know she is smart enough to finish master degree of education in the Univ. of Philippines. She runs English training school and teaches adults. She wanted to teach children after achieving YL TESOL and Storyteller certificate. Now she blames the Google translator. As far as I know the problem is her poor Korean ability. If she understands the questions of the final test she can get a better grade. So I recommended her to take a semester off and to study Korean more.



Machine translator isn't perfect yet. One day I watched a TV entertainment program named "Youth rather than a flower." Actor, Jo Jung-seok used the internet translator in Iceland. When he wants to buy three ice creams he said "Ice cream segae" in Korean. But it translated them into "ice cream world." In Korean "segae" means "three" and "world." Both have different spelling but similar pronunciation. Internet translator can't translate it appropriately according to the situation. I wonder why he didn't try to learn that simple English expression. Learning and interacting with foreigner will be meaningful and happy thing. Through the language people can exchange their thought and learn other culture as well. Learning something continuously is a basic desire of human being from the point of life-long education. In near future more intelligent machine translator will be developed like "alphago." Then people might think they don't have to learn other languages at that time.





Furthermore, I want to mention one of Nelson Mandela quotes here. "If you talk to man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart." For the meaningful and authentic interaction people must learn the target language.