Why language skills matter in a global job market

Rob: G'day, and welcome to the National Virtual Expo. My name is Robert Maliki. When we were designing the entire programme for this National Virtual Expo, we obviously wanted to put a pretty big focus on AI: how it's going to impact the workforce, what it means for careers, what it means for your studies at university. But AI isn't everything. And when we were thinking about how we could get someone in to present this point about why studying languages is still so critical, even in a future full of AI, the person who came to mind was Professor Greg Haines from the University of Queensland. Professor Haines is the head of the School of Languages and Cultures and a professor of French at UQ. He's also a fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities and the chair of that academy's Languages and Cultures committee. He's a writer and editor, and he's written numerous books, chapters, and articles in the fields of film, literature, sound studies, music, and critical theory. But importantly for you today, he's going to be talking about how, even though AI seems to do such a great job of translating and allowing us to understand different languages, learning languages is possibly not only more critical than ever before, but is an incredible advantage when it comes to going out and getting a job. Let's go and have a chat with Professor Greg Haines from the University of Queensland.

Rob: Professor Greg Haines, thanks for joining me at the National Virtual Expo.

Guest: Really glad to be here.

Rob: It's so good to have you here. You and I connected on LinkedIn over a shared love of languages, and I'm sure we'll get into all the details about that later in this conversation. But maybe just to kick us off, can we talk about that graduate who speaks two languages, possibly even three, in terms of job opportunities and career opportunities? What are some of the opportunities that might be available to them that simply aren't available to people who don't have those skills?

Guest: It's a really interesting question, Rob, because I think it's a question that we ask ourselves within the Australian context. We're an incredibly multicultural society, but even though we're multicultural, we're very often monolingual, with English being the predominant language of this great country. So of course that makes us what we'd call an Anglophone country. And what we're finding in a lot of Anglophone countries is that there seems to be this slight aversion to learning other languages. So when we ask a question like that, what are the opportunities for somebody bilingual or trilingual, it's like, that's an amazing thing. But riddle me this: in many, many countries around the world, being bilingual or trilingual is absolutely the norm. Not only the norm, it's actually the base requirement for many graduate-level entry jobs. So if any of our graduates coming out of uni want to compete in a global environment and in the global marketplace, which is what we operate in, it's not just a question of opportunity, it's actually a question of necessity. And unfortunately, we're seeing in many English-speaking countries that people just really aren't aware of that. So the opportunities are closed down.

Guest: But let me answer the question directly. There's no easy answer, because quite simply, it can open up opportunities in every single realm, no matter what job you want to go into, no matter what career you want to end up in. Adding a language, or languages, to your portfolio, to your CV, will open up global opportunities that you would not have had otherwise. I'll give you one really easy example. Indonesia, one of our closest neighbours, is supposed to be by 2050 in the top four global economies in the world. We've got maybe, if you're lucky, a dozen or two dozen students studying Indonesian at tertiary level in Australia every year. That's an absolute travesty. Think about it: if you're studying civil engineering and you think, well, how am I going to differentiate myself going for a job with an amazing Australian civil engineering company, look at the infrastructural requirements of Indonesia over the next 50 years. They are absolutely insane. Australia sells an awful lot of heavy plant to Indonesia, but that's the only part of the value chain that we capture. If you understand those global opportunities, you will be an incredibly attractive proposition to a future employer. Without that language, you simply can't, because other languages operate differently.

Why AI translation tools are not a substitute for language learning

Rob: Greg, AI is going to solve all of this. You don't need to speak another language. We're all going to be walking around with earbuds in that live-translate. Why would I spend years trying to figure out Indonesian when I can just put something in my ear?

Guest: A part of me says, oh, I wish that was going to be the case. And of course, a big part of me doesn't, because I'd be out of a job. But the reason I'm going to say what I'm going to say isn't just self-protection, by any stretch of the imagination. It is absolutely beyond doubt that machine translation has got so much better over the past five years especially, and there really was a quantum leap in what it was able to do when the large language models and all kinds of neural learning platforms came into operation. But it's still not actually communication. Large language models work according to statistical probability. That doesn't give you human communication, that gives you simulation. And think about things like the interaction we're having now, a conversation where we're responding to each other in real time. If I've got to pause every five to ten seconds and hold my phone up and let that translate, that is not natural human communication.

Guest: Not only that, while AI has got really good at translating word for word, we need to understand that language isn't simply word-by-word equivalence. And even though it's getting better at understanding certain kinds of idiomatic phrases, what it really can't gauge is context, is inflection, and all of those other semiotic signs that we use when we are communicating as humans: body language, nuance, cultural difference. All of these things it simply cannot do. The human brain is a wonderful thing. It's one of the remaining mysteries in this world, and we're still very far away from understanding exactly how it does the incredible job of processing all of that and then responding in a way that is appropriate to that context and that cultural setting.

Cultural intelligence as a business advantage

Guest: We had an amazing talk here yesterday from one of our alum out of our Spanish programme, who has just been appointed as Consul-General and Trade Commissioner for Australia to Brazil, taking care of a lot of other countries in that region as well, and who credits everything she's been able to do to her language abilities. But more than that, to her very fine, nuanced understanding of the different ways that cultures operate and the way that you need to be able to adapt to that if you're going to successfully do business in other parts of the world, where cultural norms and the ways you go about gaining trust so that you can get a contract work in very, very different ways. So it's never just about language. It's about a whole different way of being in the world and of interacting with people in a way that isn't your own. And I think understanding that the way you think the world operates is not universal, and doesn't operate the same way across all cultures, is absolutely critical for anybody who wants to do anything interesting in the future.

Rob: So true. I think about my first trip to Asia. I did a business trip when I was probably 23 or 24, never stepped foot in Asia before, and I had this day full of meetings and activities. We went to have lunch and I sat around a banquet table with the vice president of this and the director of that and the manager of this. They brought out plates and tables loaded full of food. The head of the table said, please eat, eat. So I started to fill my plate, and I look around and nobody else is eating. I said, oh, well, are you going to eat? No, no, you eat first. Okay. So I ate, I finished my plate, and they're still looking at me, saying have more. So I stuffed myself. I couldn't eat anything else, there's still a table full of food, and I said, I'm done. At the moment I said that, this whole table full of people launched into the food like they were ravenous. And this was just one of those cultural moments of doing business in this particular region that I had no understanding of whatsoever. But the person who understands that has an enormous advantage when it comes to doing business and negotiating.

Guest: Absolutely. And to unpack that a little bit more, that amazing alum we had talking to us yesterday, Gabrielle, was drawing on some academic work in this area that shows there's a very different way to approach that initial scenario, and if you get that wrong, you're not going to get the contract. She was talking about how some cultures, and this is a little bit Australia and definitely the United States, are very transactional. You sit down, it's a business lunch, let's get straight to what we're here to do and produce the results. Once you produce the result, you'll be a trusted partner and you'll get the work. Many other cultures are relational. First you actually have to sit down, you've got to understand the other person, you've got to fold yourself into that culture. That's how trust is built. Only when you've got the relationship can you even come close to discussing business. And if you don't do that and you just sit down and say, okay, let's get this deal done, you will be perceived as incredibly rude, and there's absolutely no way you'll sign the deal. So super, super important for us to understand that the world is really rich but varied, and it's so easy to just see it from our own lens. As Anglophones, we're not the dominant language group. If you look across the entire world, it's a very small proportion.

What language learning does to the human brain

Rob: I just want to take a little bit of a side door here, because learning languages does something incredible in the human brain. Can we talk about what it actually does in our brains and throughout our learning? I want to look at that and how it impacts what we're talking about in terms of artificial intelligence and how we work these days. Maybe just talk about the changes in the brain when you learn a language.

Guest: Sure. Language learning, and we know this from the research, maps new neural pathways in the brain. When you're doing that effectively, you're increasing brain plasticity, which then leads on to all kinds of secondary learning benefits. So we know that learning another language actually increases learning outcomes across all subject areas. Not only do you have this other skill set, you're actually increasing your brain's ability to cope with all of the other learning that you're doing. Think of it like a muscle: it's getting stronger and it's able to do more things.

Guest: It's interesting because there have been studies in schools that have a language immersion stream, where some kids learn a good number of their subjects in another language. A lot of parents can be really afraid to put their kids into the language immersion programme because they think, oh well, they're going to be doing everything in Mandarin or French, so their English is going to suffer and their NAPLAN results are going to be disastrous. The absolute opposite is the case. There is research that has compared NAPLAN results for kids in the immersion programme and those that haven't been. Comparing the same demographic within the same school, it has consistently shown that NAPLAN results are better across all learning areas for kids who have been in the immersion programme. That's probably the easiest way to explain some of the advantages here.

Guest: In addition, learning a language is quite a hard thing to do. Incredibly rewarding, but hard. And that's really important to understand, because if you want good results in anything in life, you need a little bit of struggle. You need to step out of your comfort zone. If you constantly stay within the realm of what's comfortable, you're actually not learning. And I think this is the danger we've seen with social media platforms over many years: that reinforcement of the same message, the echo chamber, means you're not actually seeing anything but what you already believe thrown back in your face. That's incredibly dangerous for democracy, for learning, for all kinds of different things. So welcoming in that discomfort within the safe environment of a language learning classroom builds resilience, builds the ability to deal with ambiguity. Things that you get very literally within that language classroom, which is a really rich but safe environment. It provides the kind of transferable skills that are absolutely critical in today's world.

Guest: Because if we think we can just outsource everything to AI and not put in any effort, there are serious cognitive consequences to that, and we're seeing that. There are studies starting to show precisely what we lose if we don't engage in critical thinking, in that struggle, in that discomfort. Think about what's happening in the world: the rate of change is terrifying sometimes. And if we don't understand how to deal constantly with the unknown, with new situations, with the complete paradigm shift, with the new technology that suddenly throws everything we thought we knew out the window, we're going to be in a really bad place. How are you going to sell yourself to an employer if you just know this one thing, in a world where images, video, audio, and ideas can all be generated literally in seconds? To me, the number one skill people need for the future is the ability to think critically, to use your brain to look at information and ideas and critically analyse them. And there is fantastic evidence that languages are just so powerful in developing that skill set. To me, there is literally no better way, when you're at university, than adding on a language to whatever else you might be studying.

Rob: I feel like people who've been joining all the sessions throughout the expo have been hearing a lot about AI, how it's impacting the workforce, how to use it, and so on. But that doesn't mean that these core human skills don't remain essential for where we're heading.

Guest: Absolutely. Let me give you another finding from the research that completely reinforces what you're saying. Critical thinking can be developed and nurtured in all different kinds of ways, and one of the ways it comes through in language learning is through creativity. Being able to respond to something, really critique it, and then formulate a reaction requires quite a bit of creativity. And there are many, many studies on bilingual kids that show they may not arrive at the right answer more often or more quickly than monolingual kids. But what we do know is that in nearly every case, a bilingual kid will find more answers and possible solutions to any problem they're given, because they automatically know that this thing isn't just called one thing: it could also be called something else. You're already seeing the world and all of its different possibilities, and understanding that the first idea that jumps into your head isn't necessarily the only one.

Pathways to studying languages at university

Rob: I love that. Let's jump in and be really practical. Somebody is interested in perhaps studying a language. Maybe they've got some skills already, maybe they don't. What are some of the options available at tertiary level? We might hone in on UQ as your home base, just as an example of some of the options that might be available.

Guest: Look, I've got to say, I think UQ is one of the leaders in this space, doing amazing stuff around language learning, so I'll start by tipping my hat to what we're doing. I've got an absolutely amazing team around me and we've been working really, really hard over the last five years to get the message across as to why languages are important, and I think we're starting to see some results. In Queensland's secondary system we're starting to see an uptick in the number of students sitting the Queensland Certificate language examinations, which is really, really wonderful news.

Guest: So, studying languages at tertiary level: what we've tried to do is open up as many pathways as possible to integrate languages into your university study. UQ, like quite a lot of other universities in Australia, has what's called a Diploma in Languages. What that enables you to do at UQ is to take a full language major or two language minors and just bolt it on to pretty much any degree you can do here, and it increases the length of your total degree by a year: one full major, eight courses. That's one way to do it. And certainly if you really want to get a certain way down the path towards fluency, you want to try to get in as much language study as you can while you're at it.

Guest: We've also got the possibility of people doing that whether they start from beginners level or not. That's what we do in Australian universities precisely because so few students have the opportunity or choose to take languages at school. So you can start a language from ab initio, from beginners level, at university, or you can follow on from your previous learning pathway, most normally post-Year 12, and go on from there. But if you're somewhere in the middle, we'll find the right place to put you. In addition, if you do a Bachelor of Arts, you can do a full language major or even two language majors as part of that. Most degree programmes at UQ also have space for electives or other minors. So for instance, we've been working hard with our engineering colleagues to make sure that students can do a language minor as part of engineering degrees, thinking about exactly those civil engineering needs in Indonesia that I was talking about. So we're really trying to proliferate the number of pathways available.

Guest: With our diploma, we've also started to create some dual degrees where, right from the outset, you're enrolling through QTAC in, for instance, a Bachelor of Commerce with a Diploma of Languages. That makes it much more visible for students coming to us to see that as an option. And across the university sector, many other universities offer very similar ways of doing languages. Unfortunately, there are a lot of universities now, not still the majority but an awful lot, that have got out of the language learning game precisely because numbers have been in decline. Even if you're going to one of those, there's a strong possibility you can use some of your credit that isn't already committed to your main degree to do some language study via cross-institutional enrolment.

Cross-institutional enrolment and UQ's plans to expand access nationally

Guest: Certainly here in south-east Queensland, a few years ago, I think in 2010 or 2011, we formed an alliance between ourselves, QUT, and Griffith University to make sure that languages were available to students at those three universities regardless of whether the language they wanted to learn is available at their home university. So we teach a lot of students from QUT. Our students go to Griffith if they want to do Italian, because it's not a language we offer here. And I think increasingly over the coming years we're going to see more and more collaborative arrangements like that coming into place.

Rob: So, just inventing institutions without putting anyone out: if you're studying at a university in regional Western Australia and you want to add on some language subjects, but they don't have the particular language you're interested in, you can potentially do some of your electives via another university through cross-institutional study. That's enormously appealing. It means just about everyone has got access to add this sort of thing into their degree.

Guest: Absolutely. And look, there's good information out there on websites that will tell you exactly what's available. You do of course need to think about the mode that it's taught in. If you're at a regional university, you're not going to want to have to go three times a week over to Sydney to do your language study. But there are certainly places offering courses in hybrid mode or fully online. Some universities are really well set up for online delivery. For us here at UQ, we offer all of our Russian courses in hybrid mode because we really want to open them up, as it's taught in so few places across Australia. And it's a critical, critical language. If you look at the geopolitical situation at the moment, Russia is such an important player. Russia as a nation has perhaps become a little bit of a boogeyman, and maybe that's putting people off, but it's actually the reason why we need many, many more people with a very deep understanding of Russia. We've done that precisely so that any student anywhere in the country who understands that and wants to take some Russian courses can do that with us.

Guest: At the moment I'm also looking at the possibility of offering our diploma beyond just UQ, to see if we can help students from other parts of the country undertake language study if their own university doesn't do it. We're not quite there yet, but I think this is probably coming in the next year or so.

Which languages are worth considering and why

Rob: I think by way of finishing up, Greg, we've been talking about the fact that speaking another language is the gateway to a job in its own right, because these skills are so in demand from business, government, non-profits, and international organisations, and yet so few Australians are going into it, relatively speaking. What languages might students consider if they're thinking, okay, this sounds good? I'm careful to say "opportunity" because there's opportunity everywhere, but which ones do you think people should be considering?

Guest: It's a super hard question, Rob. I think there are two things people should really be thinking through. One: what's appealing to you? Is there something about a certain language or a certain culture that is really attractive to you for some reason? Because it's going to be hard work. You're going to need to put in some hours, and you want to be able to enjoy that. It's got to be a good learning experience, otherwise there's no point doing it. But also, if you're a little bit agnostic and there are lots of things you could do, think about the career you want to go into and then think about where in the world there are major opportunities in that career. Yesterday with Gabrielle, we went to lunch with people from the Sustainable Minerals Institute and the School of Mining Engineering precisely because she's going over to Brazil. The opportunities in mining, which is a major industry in Australia, are also huge in that part of the world. So certainly you'd want to be thinking about Spanish and Portuguese if Latin America is where the opportunities exist for you.

Guest: The other thing is to do a little bit of research. If you're really fascinated by, for instance, the beauty industry, the Korean beauty industry is absolutely booming. If you're really interested in internet security protocols and digital identity, Indonesia is a world leader in this space. There are so many things like this that people, and Australian companies, don't realise. Unless we have more people with this understanding who are able to look across the world and see the opportunities there, when we finally realise that we can't just rely on digging stuff out of the ground and selling it, we're going to be in a really bad place. And that's happening right now.

Rob: I guess by way of finishing up, Professor Greg Haines from the University of Queensland. Before I let you go, Greg, what language is on your list, your "would love to learn at least one more" list?

Guest: I would actually dearly love to learn Japanese or Mandarin, just because the levels of complexity with the character-based languages increase exponentially, and it's such a different way of conceptualising language and the way those languages work. My own languages have stayed within the European romance language domain: French is really my main second language, then Spanish, and a little bit of Portuguese. I can look at Italian and understand an awful lot of it. So I'd really love to explore an Asian script-based language. The insights I would get from trying to learn one would be absolutely fascinating to me. I wish I had the time. But at the moment I'm really just trying to make sure that students all around the country have more access to languages, and it's taking up a lot of my time.

Rob: Really great. Thanks so much for joining me.

Guest: Thanks so much for the opportunity, Rob.