There has been a great deal of discussion on AI in recent weeks, with some raising (yet again) the idea that technology is going to transform the way we live and work. Part of the narrative about AI concerns its impact on education and there have been visions of using AI for providing personalised feedback as well as for easing teacher workloads by automatic lesson preparation and assessment [1]. All this has often been accompanied by worries that students will simply call up essays using tools such as ChatGPT and it will be impossible to know whose work is being submitted and what sources have been called upon.
Not surprisingly, the idea of a revolution in learning has been taken with a pinch of salt by most commentators, and this is certainly the case with students I have talked to. But these are early days and I wanted to find out what potential ChatGPT [2], as an example of freely accessible AI, had for me as a learner of foreign languages. I should say here that I am not taking any courses for credit so was not interested in using the tool to meet assessment criteria, I simply wanted to know how it could help me in my learning languages.
The most striking thing in my experiment was that ChatGPT really does enable you to carry out a conversation with a machine that feels akin to talking to a human being (the famous Turing test [3]). I have used computer tools for learning languages, and they have helped considerably, but there is a gap: you can practise all you like on online but you cannot have a real conversation with all its unpredictability and efforts for repair. ChatGPT can address this gap by responding to your questions and it will ask you more questions in return. Moreover, you can tailor the interaction by ‘telling’ the programme your language level, asking for formal or informal text in reply, and indeed setting how long the reply should be. For now all this has to be done in text but that I imagine will change to voice over time. As a conversation it is not ideal but it works. However, there are caveats. First, there is not getting away from the fact that you are ‘talking’ to a machine and that is not the same thing, you don’t get the buzz of having a real conversation. Second, the novelty, at least in my case, wore off quite quickly. Third, the value is going to vary according to level. I tried ‘conversing’ in two languages – one in which I had a very rudimentary knowledge (Russian) and the second in which I was intermediate (German). I found the activity was much more valuable in Russian (probably because the alternative of talking to a real person at such a beginner level was not realistic) than German, in which I can hold down a general conversation. Thus when it came to German, I wanted a ‘real’ conversation, not ChatGPT. Indeed, in my experience the major contribution of computers to language learning has not so much been tools for practice but enabling conversations at a distance through tandem learning, or via market places for one-to-one or small group lessons such as Italki, or simply chatting with friends at a distance who speak your target language.
However, if it is accuracy rather than fluency that is holding you back, you can use ChatGPT in more conventional ways, for example asking it to explain grammar rules and giving feedback on your writing. Of course, other programmes do something similar (‘Grammarly’, as an example, checks grammar, spelling and presentation and is particularly helpful for essay writing) but ChatGPT offers something that in my experience works more quickly and more flexibly.
This was part of the feedback I received on my Russian conversation which explained what was kindly described as a typo and gave grammar and pronunciation hints. The same point might be covered in a text book but the point is that here it is given in the context of a ‘real life’ (albeit simulated) conversation:
Original text: Как Тье Translation: “How are you?” Explanation: There’s a typo in “Как Тье.” It should be “Как ты?” (Kak ty?) which means “How are you?” “Ты” (ty) is the informal singular form of “you.”
Another suggested ways of using ChatGPT is to ask for materials that would help you with your language learning [4]. In my case I asked the programme to list ten sites that would help me as an intermediate German speaker. To be honest these were all known to me so it was not much help. In any case, I think more most people are quite adept at finding what they want on the internet using general search tools. And a wider point here is that we tend to return to the sites we find useful and do not spend a lot of time looking for new ones. There also appears a problem that early versions of ChatGPT are trawling through older sites and may miss more recent additions.
What about ChatGPT and teaching?
I was overall impressed by what the speed and flexibility of ChatGTP, but when all was said and done it was not going to be a huge help to me in my language learning. However, I think if I was still a teacher of languages, I would suggest students try it and set up some activities in class for them to assess its usefulness. For example, rather than expect the programme to generate text at the click of the button, students could be asked to give clear instructions in their target language about the kind of text they wanted. They could go on to inspect the text, assess its fit with what their specification, and edit it accordingly. They could, as an alternative, be asked to produce alternative versions of a text, say, in formal and informal registers or in regional variations, and then compare and contrast them. I would also encourage students to work with each other, using the target language, when exploring ChatGPT by discussing what they want to ask and agreeing on new questions. If assessment was important then whatever exercise they carried out could be evaluated for students’ ability to access versions and text and edit them, not the generated text itself.
Before leaving ChatGTP, I looked at way in which it might help a teacher produce material for a lesson. I asked the programme to provide a lesson plan for introducing the verb ‘sein’ to a class of German beginners. It gave a reasonable lesson plan, https://mickhammond.blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/lesson-on-sein.pdf, though there must be similar resources available on a number of sites inclduing ones with flash cards and PowerPoints for downloading. Nonetheless, I could imagine generating plans with ChatGPT could be a quick fix even if the plans would need adjusting for context. It is worth noting here that ChatGPT will not itself provide you with presentations but it did provide me with the marked out text I could easily put onto slides for my lesson.
In the same vein A teacher might also find ChatGPT helpful in the production of work sheets. For example, I asked for the most difficult words in a dialogue for intermediate learners [5] alongside an English translation. The words included
- “WG” – Shared apartment / Flat-sharing
- “Umzug” – Move / Relocation
- “An der Nase herumgeführt” – Led by the nose / Deceived
- “rein platonisch” – Purely platonic
This seemed useful – though many sites, including the one I was using, provide their own key to difficult vocabulary. But I could see that ChatGPT might come into its own with more difficult texts. For example, I accessed an item on the news site of Deutsche Welle [6] on the death of the Russian mercenary leader Progoschin and some of the suggested words included.
- Gründer und Leiter – Founder and Leader
- russische Söldner-Truppe – Russian Mercenary Group
- Jewgeni Prigoschin – Yevgeny Prigozhin (a name)
- Flugzeugabsturz – Airplane Crash
- ums Leben gekommen – Died
- Telegram-Kanal – Telegram Channel
- Verbreitung – Dissemination / Distribution
- Videos (sic!) – Videos
- meldete – Reported
- Tod – Death
- langjährigen Vertrauten – Longtime Confidant
- russischen Präsidenten – Russian President
- Wladimir Putin – Vladimir Putin (a name)
- Luftfahrtbehörde – Aviation Authority
My final thought is that we always want technology to provide a short cut to learning a language but it cannot do that; learning is always going to require application and a willingness to expose your ignorance in front of other people. Of course, you might give up on language learning completely and manage every day interactions abroad using what are essentially AI tools such as machine translation (Google Translate or equivalents) and that is fine. However, that is not learning the language.
Notes
[1] e.g. Gluska, J. (2023) How AI Will Permanently Disrupt The Education Industry [online] https://goldpenguin.org/blog/how-ai-will-permanently-disrupt-the-education-industry/
Academics have been more even-handed though often enthusiastic. Yueh and Chiang, for example, are upbeat about AI but the examples from early adopters that they gave in a special education on AI seem modest in scope:
Yueh, H.-P., & Chiang, F.-K. (2020). AI and robotics in reshaping the dynamics of learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 51(5), 1804-1807.
[2] There are of course alternatives to ChatGPT see, for example, Glukhovskyy, A. (2023) The 6 Best ChatGPT [online] https://growthtribe.io/blog/chatgpt-alternative
[3] To pass the Turing test an observers cannot reliably tell human from machine text – names after Alan Turing the (now) celebrated English mathematician and pioneer computer scientist (1912-1954) – though to complicate matters Chat GTp will self-identify early on as machine.
I’m an artificial intelligence language model created by OpenAI, specifically the GPT-3.5 architecture. I’m designed to process and generate human-like text based on the patterns and information present in the data I’ve been trained on.
[4] You can read much more on the use of in language learning through blogs e.g Simon, E. (2023) 6 Ways to Use ChatGPT to Learn a Foreign Language [Online] https://www.icls.edu/6-ways-to-use-chatgpt-to-learn-a-foreign-language/
[5] This came from Deutsche Welle Lernen (n.d.) Jojo Sucht das Glück [online] Neue WG https://learngerman.dw.com/de/1-neue-wg/l-17404952
[6] Deutsche Welle (2023) Putin bestätigt indirekt Tod von “Wagner-Chef” Prigoschin [Online]
https://www.dw.com/de/prigoschin-tod-offiziell-noch-nicht-bestätigt/a-66617722
Michael Hammond 
wow!! 30Twin cities
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