THE teacher who corrects your correspondent’s awful Mandarin is soft-spoken, authoritative and far away. Thanks to Skype, you can have face-to-face lessons with native speakers of more or less any language without stirring from your chair. Technology may one day make language-learning redundant (see article); meanwhile, it makes it easier.

Language-teaching companies are slowly embracing technology. Berlitz is the biggest. Founded in 1878, its method is simple: seat no more than four or five students with a teacher who will utter not a word of their native tongue. Berlitz can also group learners with a specific need: tourists, say, or energy executives.

The company is a bit of a digital dawdler. Most of its smartphone apps are repurposed versions of its old books. (Berlitz has sold its publishing business.) Its web lessons are a useful supplement to the classroom, but somewhat clunky. The company is focused on what has always been its strength: personal teaching. Berlitz does not say how much profit it makes; a decade ago it was swallowed by Benesse, a Japanese education company, and its results are no longer published separately. In any case, it is hungry: Berlitz hopes to triple in size by 2018, says Marcelo Roman, a senior vice-president, largely by acquisition.

Rosetta Stone, an American technology company, provides a contrast, supplementing technology with human teaching rather than vice versa. Its software has a clever interface that eschews traditional drills in favour of pictures and examples that gradually and intuitively build vocabulary and grammar skills. More.

See: The Economist