Is ChatGPT REALLY worth your time as a language learner?

AI is everywhere these days, especially in the language learning space -- but is it really worth your time?

Tune in to find out how we use ChatGPT in our own language learning journeys and how to use it for your own!

Here's the corrected writing prompt we're currently using (it's a work in process, so let us know how you like it). 👇

"I will send you a series of messages. They will be in [TARGET LANGUAGE]. Please correct the grammar. I would like your reply to have these sections:
1. Send your reply with the corrected version
2. Send the corrected version with the changes bolded.
3. Then, underneath that, include a table of the corrections you made and why you corrected them."
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[Fan_kira]

In my opinion chatgpt is very good for making corrections of phrases to assure that it's spelled correctly

[선녀고양이]

When using ChatGPT to proofread my writing I find follow up questions are really important. I frequently ask, "Do these sentences use phrases that sound natural to a native speaker?" Or, "How would [TARGET LANGUAGE] speakers commonly phrase these ideas? Can you give me a few examples?" I also ask about spelling. And as good as ChatGPT is I am mindful that it makes mistakes. If something looks odd I will ask for clarification.

[modalmixture]

ChatGPT has blown me away with its ability to improve my writing. I’m at a stage where my grammar is usually fine, but I need assistance selecting the most appropriate ways of saying things. It’s so good at being like “Hey, what you’ve written is correct, but here’s a more natural, colloquial way of saying this” and then suggesting something that is exactly what I’d intended but more native sounding. And it manages to be friendly and encouraging as well. It’s honestly replaced a lot of what I used to use human tutors for.

Another use case is asking it, “What’s the difference between these 3 similar verbs? Please give me examples.” In this case it gives way more useful and contextual information than a dictionary or google translate ever did. For all that Translate has improved over the years, it’s still pretty terrible at understanding nuance and context, and ChatGPT makes it look primitive by comparison.

All that said, I don’t feel the need for some company to make me an AI “tutor”. I can prompt the current models to do exactly what I need them to do, and those use cases tend to be pretty specific.

[GwynneM]

I used ChatGPT last year to create my initial self-study plan for learning Mandarin, among other self-study curriculum I've had it develop, which are very useful. I also find it's really useful for generating themed vocabulary lists, pulling vocabulary words and sentencing mining from transcripts, etc. It makes pretty decent graded readers, too.

[YogaBlissDance]

Riddled with mistakes...not loveing it for LL. Great for other things.

[derpauleglot]

I find ChatGPT (and other AI tools) much more useful for teachers than for students. I can generate images for flashcards, it helps me come up with examples, yesterday I gave it a list of questions I brainstormed for a German class and asked ChatGPT to categorize them. Writing corrections and translations can be done much faster(AI followed by post-editing) etc.

Howerver, it does mess up randomly, and it does so with a lot of confidence. That's fine when I know what the correct result should look like, but I wouldn't trust it with languages I'm still learning. Unknown unknowns and all that.

But yeah, for people who aren't perfectionists and don't have access to a teacher, it's definitely quite useful. It might also depend on the language, German and English probably work better than Sorbian and Greenlandic.

[unonoq]

For anybody that didn't find the prompt they mentioned:
"I will send you a series of messages. They will be in [TARGET LANGUAGE]. Please correct the grammar. I would like your reply to have these sections:
1. Send your reply with the corrected version
2. Send the corrected version with the changes bolded.
3. Then, underneath that, include a table of the corrections you made and why you corrected them."

[hijackbyejack]

How often does ChatGPT get stuff wrong?

[GospelFire]

ChatGPT 3.5 is absolutely garbage with all things Bengali unfortunately. I do wonder if ChatGPT 4 might be better, however I'm hesitant to even spend the 20 bucks to find out, as I have no confidence in the non-romance/latin based language skills of AI as a result lol.