Humans vs Machines: who do you want to check your high-stakes English test?
AI is useful, but machines still make mistakes. Researchers from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne found machines to mistake a joystick for a Chihuahua, for example, or a coffee-maker for a cobra. Yet the human brain would have no problem correctly identifying the objects.
We’ve already covered some points where machines marking your English test can be unfair: they can’t always recognise different accents. Machines also don’t know jokes or slang words.
Human examiners are language experts. They have years of experience working with students of different levels of English, and with people coming from all over the world. This means they’ll understand your accent and won’t penalise you for it.
Human language experts are trained to assess your English language skills. Apart from your grammar and spelling in writing or pronunciation when speaking, the way you present your ideas is also assessed. We call this cohesion. Cohesion is when you successfully present your ideas and arguments related to the given topic in a related manner. So, your points must be related to the topic and be convincing with supporting examples. Humans will understand how your examples relate to a question, but machines can’t always do this.
Finally, humans can understand emotions. When your future depends on an English language test, it can be stressful. Humans are able to understand when you talk a bit quieter because you are nervous (and won’t fail you for it). In fact, human examiners can help you feel at ease.
