India, Nov. 5 -- A student in Lyon opens a chatbot to polish an essay before the bell rings. A teacher in a Delhi classroom watches her pupils do the same on their phones under the desk, and wonders, not for the first time this term, what exactly is left for her to do. The demand for English has never been higher, and yet the tools correcting it, translating it, even conversing in it, have never been more convincing.

This is the tension running through this piece. We set out to answer two questions honestly: how does someone actually become an English teacher today, whether in a French lycee, an online classroom, a language school abroad or an Indian coaching centre, and what, if anything, do english teachers still have that a machine do...