Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here, and today I want to talk about ChatGPT
again, in a little more detail.
I've done a bit of research.
Uh, I looked up, uh, you know, what some people are saying about how
to use it for different purposes, including language learning.
Uh, I may forget some of these things as I go through this, but what I
thought I would do is actually have you share my screen as I go to ChatGPT
and attempt to have it perform different tasks or activities for me.
Remember that when it comes to language learning, uh, everything
comes down to your attitude.
That is the attitude of the learner, the amount of time you spend, and of
course, how efficiently that time is spent spent with the language, and
then things that you're able to notice in the language and your ability to
notice, as I've said before, increases if you have a positive attitude.
If you want to notice, and with more time spent with the language, you
inevitably notice more and more things.
So if ChatGPT is going to help us, it's gotta make us more motivated,
it's gonna make our, you know, use of time more efficient is
gonna help us to notice things.
That's the way I see it.
So essentially in, in whether learning languages or using languages uh, and
for both the sort of activities that are available to us are reading, listening,
speaking, writing, and then dealing with issues of grammar or correct usage.
So how does chat or how can ChatGPT be used in these various areas?
Remember, ChatGPT is text-based, so it, I don't understand all the technology, but
it, it, it search sort of searches, all kinds of texts that has been produced over
however much time in various languages and is able to generate answers to
whatever it is you, you ask it to do.
So it has no audio.
However, if you want to use audio, you have to then use another
form of, uh, you know, artificial intelligence, convert the audio to text.
If you want to listen to what ChatGPT generates, again, you have
to use another form of artificial intelligence, which is text to speech.
But we'll get back to that.
We'll get to that later on.
So we are now in ChatGPT hopefully, and I could say to ChatGPT let's
start out now with reading.
So I could say, uh, you know, write a story in Italian
about traveling in, uh, Italy.
Okay.
See what the, see what it does with that.
So, as you can see very quickly, it produces a story.
Now, I don't know how much it's gonna give us.
We'll see.
Uh, but it has a lot of good stuff, Maria, blah, blah, blah.
Okay.
So once I have the story, I can now import this story into LingQ and, uh,
I'll just show you how that works.
Um, yeah.
So I'll go to my Persian.
I'll change the language to Italian.
So now this is material that I can use to learn, right?
So I go there to import, import a lesson, and uh, I could call this, uh, whatever
travel, and I have to pick a course.
So, Um, for the, I'll just call us quick imports.
It doesn't matter.
And so that's gonna be there.
And then here I just copy and paste.
I have to go back into there and I have to copy the story.
Copy and come back here.
Input the text.
The text is required.
I know that.
Bingo.
And now I basically...
where I forget, oh yeah, save and generate lesson.
So everything is okay.
I have no audio file to add.
If I had someone record it, I could add the audio file, save, and generate lesson.
So I have now created a lesson about traveling in Italy.
Um, let's wait till it's, all right.
New lesson.
Now if I wanted to, I could generate the lesson audio, so generate lesson
audio because there is no audio.
But I think a lot of people don't like to listen to stuff in text-to-speech.
... Okay, so you have a story now that you can listen to, uh, and study and save
words and phrases and so forth, and.
Let's go back here.
So now we might say, uh, you know, please, sorry...
so that's content.
By the way.
I, I won't go through all of this, but, uh, one thing that I did try
doing, I went to, um, uh, Hamlet by Shakespeare and, uh, grabbed a piece
of text and I asked, um, Maybe there's a record of it here, maybe not.
I asked, um, ChatGPT to convert it into modern English, and then I imported
into LingQ and I turned on the text to speech, so I had audio for it, and I
could listen to parts of Hamlet, uh, in English, but in modern English,
so you can take any complex or old text and convert it into modern text.
So a big part of, of, um, I think ChatGPT is, um, helping you create content.
For example, let's say that you had to have, you had an interview
coming up in French, uh, a job with a pharmaceutical company.
Let's do it in English.
Let's say, uh, please write a dialogue, write a dialogue, uh, between a job
applicant and potential employer for a um, pharma pharmaceutical company.
Okay.
Let's see what happens here.
Struggling a bit here.
Oh, here we are.
Oh, he's still in Italian.
Very interesting.
So we have a, an interview now in Italian.
I should have specified that this was in English, but it still thinks
I'm in Italian, but here you go.
You've got a, um, dialogue of a potential, you know, of an interview
in Italian uh, between someone looking for a job with a pharmaceutical company
and what the employer might say.
Um, I think you can also have a dialogue, but I'm not gonna do that.
But you can actually talk to, um, ChatGPT.
I haven't done this.
It's not something that I would do, but the thing about language learning
and about ChatGPT is that the potential ways of using it are, are, are, are,
I wouldn't say limitless, but there are many, many ways you can use it.
So it's gonna be, it's gonna depend on your needs, on what
you like doing and so forth.
But so obviously ChatGPT is great for generating written content.
Uh, personally I would be, I would like to see some way that I could convert
podcast material into accurately transcribed timestamped transcripts.
But that's not something that ChatGPT can do because it has
trouble dealing with audio.
Okay.
So that's reading, speaking.
It doesn't speak, you can't listen unless you use, uh, text to speech.
Uh, you can write and have them correct your writing.
So again, I'm not gonna do that, but you could write something and it will correct.
Um, we won't do that, but you can imagine how that would work.
And then you would get a corrected text, which again, you
could import if you wanted to.
But now let's look at sort of what I think is a real opportunity here is in grammar.
So you say, um, can, let's just...
can you, uh, create a um, summary of let's go to French and grammar.
Let's see what happens.
I have no idea what they're gonna say.
So you can now get an overview.
That doesn't say much.
Not very useful.
Okay.
Um, please explain in French, how...
sorry, French, how, ah, how to use French pronouns with examples.
I could be dictating this, which is another form of...
so we get a lot of useful stuff if you want to sort of
focus in on French pronouns.
Well, and it could be, you know, any other aspect of the language.
Uh, and so you'll get something.
And again, I would always ask for my grammar explanations.
It depends where you are at an early stage in the language.
You may want your grammar explanations in English.
Uh, read them, learn them, forget.
And at a later stage, you may want them in the target language and then
you can import them and use that as learning material and even attach
an audio file to it if you want.
Okay, so how about please, uh, create.
Uh, 10 sentences in Spanish featuring the subjunctive.
So now, uh, I'd have to go through these, um, to make sure they're correct.
I think they are, but I had the experience when I asked for 10
examples of the instrumental case in Russian that two of them were wrong.
So, but it doesn't matter.
You can have a few mistakes in wrong information with enough exposure.
Eventually these things start to click in.
So with providing you with grammar explanations, uh, I think ChatGPT is good.
The other thing is that it will correct and it, it'll even tell you what you said.
So, um, if I will go, for example, I don't got much interest in learning English.
Uh, I thinks it is too tough.
Um, even I learn English, I ain't gonna get a job.
How about that?
All right.
Oh yeah, please correct and explain the mistakes...
mistakes.
Wow.
In the following.
So there you have it.
You can correct mistakes and get some explanations.
So that's just a first attempt at using, no, we shouldn't say a first attempt
because I've looked at a little bit before, but in terms of sharing my
experience with you, showing you just some of the potential that's there.
And I think it's up to every person to choose, uh, figure out how to use it.
I, I think it's great.
I think it, it gets you some of the same results as searching in Google.
Obviously you can Google for, you know, Italian grammar,
French verbs, whatever you want.
Uh, but this is another way of doing it.
It's quite fast.
You can be more specific, uh, in what you ask for.
And I think as users become more familiar with the technology, they'll
become better and better at, at getting from ChatGPT what they want.
So I hope you found that interesting.
I look forward to your comments.
Bye for now.