Searching For Answers Proves Search Is the Answer

I'm sure anyone who has ever taken a language class heard the demanding voice of a teacher commanding that the Internet will feed us lies, make us dependent, and is never to be trusted.  Of course, the few times someone did attempt to use a translator the results were almost immediately caught by those same teachers.

However, with the growing accuracy and intuitive nature of the Internet (and a little direction from instructors), we may be able to harness this power for good.  We often snicker at the silly, surprising, yet often times incredible accuracy of Google's autofill feature in search.  While it can be very entertaining, there are limitless benefits to reap form Google's recent transition to a more natural style search.

Google teaches that "necesito" can be paired with infinitives, nouns, and comparatives

As this feature became more and more expected, I found myself relying on it to fill in gaps in my knowledge.  Google's reach has undeniably grown in breadth and accuracy.  Yet many forget to account for the rapid international spread as well.

I have found myself able to account for use of pronouns and phrasal structures in Spanish by starting to type a phrase and allowing autofill to complete the phrase.  Of course, as per our instructors, this is still not ideal for full sentence or paragraph translations, but can be incredibly helpful for those working through an assignment and hoping to look for help from home.

Of course, there are also various other lovely sources that were largely underutilized in my early years learning a language.  Along the same lines of using the search engine itself, students can use reference sites such as Linguee and forums like on WordReference to utilize the same concept - the wisdom of the crowd.  In this way, students are not denied use of the Internet, but instead use it to find for themselves what is really used by native speakers and can see the "translation" in context.

In a way, search can serve as a sort of artificial at-home tutor.  It is just as stubborn toward giving us the answers, but always eager to provide instructions and encourage us to draw conclusions for ourselves.  Search provides definitions across countries, corpus style examples taken from all types of media, as well as real life input and commentary by native speakers.  I could easily see this being implemented in classes and encouraged to supplement course content and am eager to see how teachers will address student use of the Internet moving forward.