iFlytek and CLEC Move to Advance a 'Virtual Teacher + Human Teacher' Co-Teaching Model

On September 20, the China–ASEAN International Chinese Language Education High-Quality Development Exchange Meeting was held in Nanning, Guangxi, hosted by the Guangxi Department of Education and co-organized by the Guangxi Education International Exchange Association, Guangxi Minzu University and iFlytek. iFlytek vice president Wang Zhanglong said the company, relying on the Spark large model and multilingual speech recognition and synthesis, has built a joint digital-intelligence laboratory for international Chinese language education with the Center for Language Education and Cooperation (CLEC) and created smart Chinese classrooms. The related products have been deployed in more than 900 schools worldwide.

The event moves generative AI in language education from tool assistance toward a division of labor with human teachers in instruction, and provides a verifiable deployment scale of more than 900 schools, with substantive implications for how international Chinese language education is delivered to ASEAN. For education product practitioners, the combination of the dual-teacher model and smart classrooms means products shift from single-point features to embedding in classroom workflows; for teachers and schools, a division in which a virtual teacher leads and local teachers assist will change how lesson preparation, practice and learning analytics are allocated. The original text does not provide learning-outcome or teaching-quality data, and the number of schools does not equal depth of use. International Chinese language education products will shift from single-point tools toward a classroom co-teaching model in which a virtual teacher leads and local teachers assist, changing product design and procurement logic. Chinese language teaching for ASEAN may expand its reach through smart classrooms and AI language partners, but the role and training needs of local teachers must be adjusted accordingly.