I’m not impressed with ChatGPT’s writing, nor its tendency to induce strange psychological states in some people. But you know what impresses me about ChatGPT most of all?
Given my well-documented struggles and occasional successes with language learning, I’ll take all the help I can. The Pimsleur app was a major boost to my years-long efforts, but it’s not the only tool I rely upon.
Watching movies in Spanish and French, too, is helpful, as is analyzing song lyrics in those languages and reading the Spanish and French branches of the BBC. Finding a buddy to chat with in dynamic, free-flowing conversations, though, is harder.
laying down the rules
The language exchange app iTalki has been a mixed blessing for me. The concept of connecting people to practice a language is solid, but human beings are flaky and tend to overstate how well they speak a language.
I’d often end up in situations in which I spoke so little French and the Parisian so little English that we couldn’t even communicate enough to get a basic conversation off the ground.
Then I figured I had this ChatGPT app on my phone that was mostly collecting figurative dust. Why not punch in some ground rules and see how the AI did?
I began every chat by telling ChatGPT that I’d like to practice a conversation, and for it to correct me anytime I made a mistake. That’s more than I can say for real-life people, who are typically too polite or shy to offer corrections.
At times, I’d have to tweak the rules on the fly. For French, I had to ask ChatGPT to provide instructions in English with examples in French. That fit my French proficiency better at the time.
I highlight Spanish and French here because they’re popular secondary languages for native English speakers like myself, but I tried the same rules on ChatGPT practice conversations in Swahili and Russian, too.
The conversations work just as well for an intermediate speaker, as I found out when I approached ChatGPT in Spanish, as it does for a rank beginner, as I did in my pre-Pimsleur days with French.
The way in which I’d go about it is different, though. If you’ve had some training and exposure to a language, know the basics of verb conjugation, and have memorized at least the most common verbs and nouns, you can kick off the conversation in your target language entirely.
ChatGPT’s anodyne writing makes for poor creative writing, but that kind of bland, one-size-fits-all prose fits language learning perfectly because I just want to pass regular, straightforward sentences back and forth between ChatGPT and myself like a tennis ball. I’m not expecting (or even wanting) Herman Melville.
Give it a whirl. It’s not a replacement for directed learning, such as a learning app or course, nor is it as powerful as immersing yourself in a foreign country. But it’s free and easy to bring up on your phone or computer at any time, and it’s been well worth it for me.
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