In business, a company is much more than a stellar enterprise model or groundbreaking invention to your clients. These are important of course, but will mean nothing to them if your communication is below par. Communication is becoming ever more important, as more or less every ambitious business today is international. People travel more and work more frequently with people from different countries. One language simply isn’t an option in today’s culturally and linguistically diverse environment. 

For a business to succeed, the workforce must be able to communicate with foreign customers and partners to make the most out of every business opportunity. This helps to break cultural and communication barriers that would otherwise burden your business. Multilingual staff are more capable of providing a higher level of customer satisfaction across diverse clientele.

What’s more, you don’t want to miss out on lucrative deals and opportunities because you or your employees misunderstood or misjudged the tone. 

Investing into your employees’ language learning is akin to investing in any other asset that adds value to your business, be it laptops or business trips, and you wouldn’t think twice about those.

AI-enhanced language learning
Until relatively recently, businesses wanting their staff to learn a language meant giving them days off work and hiring expensive face-to-face tutors. The cost of this training for companies often ranges between 1000 – 3000 USD per employee, which means that the majority of personnel remain untrained. 

Now, however, AI-driven digital solutions will drastically change this by offering an affordable solution that delivers a predictable result among the whole personnel. AI solutions can deliver an incredibly high level of language education. Besides, they will cost 10-20 times less per hour.

For a number of reasons, AI is to become as proficient as humans in language teaching within the next few years:

• Personalization. Unlike classrooms of tens of people where lessons have to suit everyone, AI language learning can be made much more individual. Gone are the days of rote learning and going at the pace of the least competent student. Everything is tailored to each individual, from the pace of learning and topics to delivery style and method.

• Learning in context. Generative AI allows for unlimited relevant and engaging exercises, which offer new knowledge and control of the material. Generative AI is brilliant when it comes to designing numerous exercises that are relevant to what a user cares about (which grabs interest), fit their current level of knowledge (Every bit of it activates new words on a difficulty level that suits a user best and increases over time), and control their previous flaws (repetition is a mother of confidence). This combo secures fast and robust progress.

• Feedback. Given its perfect memory, every moment it considers the educational process and the student’s path. This lifts the quality of feedback, and self-studies often fail due to a shortage of it. AI has the capability to bridge this gap, much like a live tutor. Given its ability to consider phrases or words in various contexts, it doesn’t just provide a brief statement of the mistake and a theoretical explanation from a textbook. Instead, it offers a detailed breakdown of the situation, presenting different correct options for implementing new words and grammar.

• Speaking practice. With traditional language learning methods, speaking practice can also be a nerve-wracking experience. Making mistakes is, of course, an important and inevitable part of life. However, this can prevent people from engaging and practicing, significantly stunting their progress. With AI on the other hand, learners can perfect their speech and gain confidence with the help of a non-judgemental bot, which is crucial for effective education. 

This experience closely mirrors interaction with a live tutor, who guides the student through unfamiliar territory using feedback and progressively increases the level of difficulty in vocabulary and grammar. For sure, concerns about AI tutors exist, as it’s easy to imagine someone attempting English through ChatGPT and failing. But applications-wise, we should view the system in whole, not the AI solely. While I agree that an experienced professional live tutor is a preferable option for mastering the language, the question arises: are they affordable and accessible? That’s the case for AI-enhanced apps: they deliver real knowledge and experience at a very low cost, and are widely accessible. AI excels in specific tasks, and should be integrated in a very well structured process of learning with user-friendly interfaces, governed by a solid methodology. 

The previous generation of language apps helped learners with grammar and vocabulary expansion, but the current era of AI-driven tools brings language learning on a different level, adopting a method similar to how young children learn: through conversations. These conversations are designed to be suitable — easy and familiar enough to encourage engagement, yet challenging enough to promote progress. With all that said, AI is unbelievably good when it comes to new examples in context, repetition, feedback, and personalization. 

And that’s the perfect case for corporate language learning. With a little help from AI, it becomes incredibly effective and hassle-free, potentially boosting every enterprise to serve their clients best.

AI-Driven Workforce Advancement
It’s not a groundbreaking realization that investing in your team and their language skills greatly benefits business. What is new, however, is the method. It’s no longer an expensive drawn-out process that will leave you with half a wallet and workforce. It is now not only much cheaper and will have your business reaping the benefits in a fraction of the time, but it’s also suitable for all employees, whether managers or lower-paid staff. Mutual intelligibility between you, your employees and your clients will give your business a personality that clients can get behind, relate to and want to invest their time and money in.