Is AI the final nail in the coffin for modern languages?

A challenge for schools is that by the time students really hit foreign languages at secondary level, students have decided that they are too difficult or have decided on different directions. A gentler introduction to languages at primary might help. Latin is seen as unfashionable, however exposure to it does much to reveal the common threads in western European languages and makes the mountain less challenging. It was notable that in my peer group in high school in Aus, the majority of the students doing the foreign language classes in later years came from the STEM-intensive students who saw a benefit in broadening their portfolio. Another factor is the correlation with second-language use at home. Students who are used to encountering second [or third] languages might be more optimistic about studying another language.

No need to blame AI. This outcome was predictable from the late 1970s when the conception of the study of, say, 'French', began to be conceived less as a literary-historical discipline supported by a necessary (and largely passive) linguistic competence, in favour of, essentially, a way to acquire practical communicative skills for personal and professional interactions, supplemented with a measure of, equally pragmatic, 'cultural competence'. At the same time, of course, the British Council did a phenomenal job of selling English to the rest of the world as, progressively, a language of 'international', then 'global', communication, and now as a 'global lingua franca', making 'communicative skills' in other languages appear increasingly redundant. MAK, formerly Cardiff/Coimbra.