If you haven't been in a cave over the last few years, you've certainly seen the boom in artificial intelligence. There have been various news reports about job losses, the big changes we're going to see in the next few years and even apocalyptic predictions worthy of movies like "Age of Ultron" and "I, Robot".
Indeed, many things are likely to change over the next few years, but we don't need to panic, at least not now. Instead, we can take advantage of these Artificial Intelligences (AIs) and use them as our allies on the road to fluency in a new language.
With this in mind, in this article I'm going to give you some tips on how to use ChatGPT, or a similar AI, to practice the language you're learning, and why not, prepare for those immersions you're planning to attend this week.
ChatGPT as your private English teacher and enhancer
Much more than just a search tool or an assistant for boring and repetitive tasks, ChatGPT can take on the role of a real language "teacher" when configured with a simple action command:
Which is nothing more than asking GPT to act as something specific, such as a consultant, a piece of software, an operating system, or in this case, an English teacher.
But... it should be noted that the idea here is not to change your entire routine, make you cancel your subscriptions and courses, dismiss your teacher or avoid that fluent friend of yours. At first, the GPT here is just another tool that can help you improve your English and therefore make you more confident.
Also note that we can have a very relaxed conversation in the chat, even choosing the topic we would like to talk about, including "Learning English" which was the topic of an immersion I took part in recently and the tips given by the Chat helped me a lot during it.
Adding rules to ChatGPT and making interaction even better
Now that you understand the basics of ChatGPT's commands, we can go a step further and explore ways to further improve our interaction with this tool.
As well as asking it to act as an English enhancer, we can establish some rules, as in the example below:
So now, as well as maintaining the interaction we had before, we can also learn a bit more from our mistakes, because the GPT will now point out improvements we can make to our texts:
With this feature, you can think of ChatGPT as the X-men's "Danger Room", testing your vocabulary and delving into any topic without fear of being happy.
And that's wonderful, because I know how uncomfortable it can be to ask someone to correct you during a conversation, as sometimes this can interfere with your line of thought, or worse, create even more insecurity.
What about the insecurity?
I know that feeling insecure is horrible, I've been there and I still go through it often, but understand that when we start studying something new it's normal to feel that way and with a new language it's no different, quite the opposite.
Studying English has always been a challenge for me. I've tried to study in different ways, using mobile apps, attending classes in person, using digital teaching platforms and no matter how much I started with that (or those) FIRE, I'd always find a reason to stop.
TALKNTALK was a turning point for me. I always felt that I was able to put more effort into an activity when I made a commitment with other people and having to take part in weekly immersions and report on what I had learned on social media helped me a lot to overcome my inertia and get back to studying English.
As much as I've been able to see my progress over the last few months, I feel I need to supplement my studies and using this tool has helped me a lot, and I hope it helps you too because:
"The more resources an insecure person has, the more likely they are to feel good."
At TALKNTALK you can take part in a writing class with other students to network and gain even more confidence in your English. Take advantage and book here.
That's all for now!