Episode 15 - How to learn English with ChatGPT

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, and welcome to the 3 English Experts. I'm Birgit. I'm Dave. And I'm Rebecca. And welcome to this episode. 3 English Experts is your English podcast to help you speak better English and create a positive and happy mindset for your English learning journey. So, hello and welcome to this episode where we are going to talk about CHAT-GPT. And we're going to discuss about it. Everybody needs to look at it, look into it, is it useful? And of course, we're asking the same question. We are exploring, we're discussing. And Dave, I think, will start and has asked CHAT-GPT an interesting question. Absolutely. Thanks a lot, Birgit. Hello, everyone. So yeah, I asked CHAT-GPT the question, I would like to offer students a top three ways CHAT-GPT can help me improve my English. And what would the answer be? Okay. So of course, CHAT-GPT starts off with the certainly, and it gives us three possibilities. So here we go. The first one, I will just read out the three and then we can talk about each one individually, probably. So the first one was conversational practice. The second one was writing assistance. And the third one was language learning resources. Okay. So maybe we can go back to the conversational practice. I then asked CHAT-GPT just to give me an example. And it gave me a fantastic example of, for example, the user saying to CHAT-GPT, how are you today? CHAT-GPT said, yes, hello, I'm fine. Thank you for asking. How about you? And then it gave a little conversation, talking about things, about hobbies, this kind of thing. Yeah. So it does it. Yeah. I just, I actually tried this for the first time today, and I did it in Spanish and also in a bit of Japanese. What I didn't know actually, though, when I started was it only works on a phone, right? It only works on a mobile app, the actual when you're speaking, not typing. So I tried to do it online. I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, Dave, but I tried to do it on my PC. And I was just, I was like, how do I have a conversation with you? And it just said, this version I can only type, you can only type. So it was only then that I realized I had to download the app to my phone. So anybody who doesn't know that, that's what you need to do. But once I did that, it was super easy to use. You just press on the little headphones and it just says start speaking. And I said, could you please have a conversation with me in Spanish? Can we have a chat? Of course, because it always says, of course, and then, yeah, and then I had just a sort of typical small talk, you know, conversation with it and it corrected my pronunciation. There was a couple of times I'd lost the word. So I said, you know, how do I say this in Spanish? And it gave me the word and it was pretty good. I enjoyed it. Birgit, have you done that too? Yes, today. Also today, I tried it. And the same experience on the mobile phone. And I was surprised because I started a conversation and made it ask me questions. And it did. Yeah. And that was fantastic, I thought. Very good. The question I'm asking myself now, because I didn't look into that, would that work on different levels, no matter how good I speak, no matter if I'm a real beginner? Would it answer differently, Rebecca? I'm not sure. You see, when it started talking in Spanish, it was speaking very, very quickly. And I said to it a few times, I'm still not a very good level. Could you please slow down? And it really didn't. It said, OK, and then it carried on at the same speed. So I don't know. And the questions it was asking me, I mean, my Spanish is quite good. And the questions it was asking me, I was able to understand them. I was thinking there's no way someone of like A2 level would understand these questions. So yeah, Birgit, I don't know. So can you ask it and say, please ask me questions A2 level? Can you do that? Of a lower level? Yeah, you can. Yeah, it is. It is possible. And I think that's part of the idea with the prompts, that you try to do that at the very beginning. So you say, I'm at level A2, or whatever level you're at, or less, or intermediate, or beginner, or advanced, to keep it more simple. It's not perfect. It's still relatively new. So I'm sure with time, it will get better. But at the moment, it is possible. But also, just to come back to the point on the app, of course, you can do it with the mobile. But there is a way, if you want to work on the computer and do it on the computer, or your laptop, or whatever, you can get a download for the computer. So through the browser, that means that you can actually hear ChatGPT speak to you, and you can speak back to ChatGPT. So it is possible. It takes a bit of finding out, but you can get one for the browser and then install it within ChatGPT. Okay, maybe that's the mistake I made. I didn't say at the beginning what my level was. So maybe next time I will say, my level is approximately this, can we have a conversation? And then it would be interesting to see, does it adapt the questions to my level? But yeah, it was fun. Not bad. Not bad. Well, the second one was then the, oh, what I could say about it actually is also that it does correct you. I think you also said that, didn't you, Rebecca? It does correct you. It corrected my pronunciation. And there was a couple of times I used the wrong word, and it said, no, it should be this. Yes. And I assume you could even put that in the prompt as well, asking it to pay attention, particularly on pronunciation and speed and fluency. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Wow. Because I said to it in my example, when it went through the conversation, of course I didn't hear it. It was just written in the chat. And that's another thing, isn't it, Rebecca? You mentioned earlier that it saves the chat, so you can always come back and read over it again. Yeah. That was useful. Yeah. Yeah. But it said if there are any corrections, then it would normally tell you. So for example, in the example, I said, okay, make a mistake. And it said, I enjoy play sport like basketball. And then ChatGPT corrected it. So I enjoy playing sports with an S, like basketball. So it does correct you as well. I did that too. I made some mistakes on purpose to see would it correct them. And it did. And it told me why it was wrong and which tense it was that I'd used by mistake. Yeah. And when I got it right, it was really like, ooh, perfecto. It was really nice. It was actually being nice. Ooh, perfecto. So yeah, no, it definitely, the feedback thing is really, is really helpful. I think also you could, I think it's the same on the app as well. You can have different English or types of English. Certainly on the computer version, you can have different kinds of, you can have American English, you can have British English, you can have Canadian, Australian. On the app though, I could only see that all the voices were American. Oh really? It gave you a choice of these voices. They all had names like Sky and da, da, da, da. But they all sounded American. So I don't know, maybe I didn't look at the right place. I don't know. Well, as I said, on the one on the computer, if you get this plugin through the browser, then that's possible. And also, for example, if you, another trick, if you want to listen to different accents, you can also go to a, I'll leave it in the chat as well. Oh, not in the chat, in the notes later on. It's, I think it's called naturalreader.com. And there you can take, you know, copy and paste any text and have it being read out by a native speaker or of any accent or whatever. And so it reads it out so you can start recognizing accents. If you want, for example, let's say a Liverpool accent, a Scouse accent or whatever, it can do things like that on naturalreader.com. I think it's called naturalreader, something like that. But I'll leave the correct one. Very amazing. Wow. Yeah. Okay. So the second point was, we had conversation was first point. The second point was? Yeah, it was writing assistance, you know, so proofreading. So checking what you've written, whether it's essays, emails, anything, basically. And it will obviously tell you about your grammar mistakes, suggesting alternative phrasing, vocabulary, et cetera, et cetera. So I've done that in many different situations and it works brilliantly. The only thing I've been doing recently is trying to get emails at different sort of levels of formality from, you know, sort of very formal, sort of in the middle, sort of easier English, and then also very informal emails. And that's sometimes a little bit tricky. It's not quite got that. But it still gives you an idea of the differences between the three, but it's not perfect at that for sure. But not bad. Birgit? And have you tried to compare? I mean, we can use Lingui or Deeple or Google to compare the result of a translation. I mean, I need to do that, but I haven't done. To compare a text, put something in and then compare how it comes out of Google, Deeple, ChatGPT, I have no idea. I mean, I haven't done that specifically. I think from as far as translating goes, Deeple is probably the better one still. I would say so, yeah. Google, I wouldn't bother too much with. No. But ChatGPT can do it as well. The other thing, the good thing is about ChatGPT, and I've done this the other way around in German. So I've written emails in German and then just asked ChatGPT to make it sound more natural German. Natural German. That's quite important. And that works. And it works. That's a good idea. I look at it and I think, OK, yeah, that sounds more natural than my German. Yeah. So it works with things like that for sure. Yeah. I think that's helpful. I think my only critical point of the writing thing is, you know, people ask it to create a text. So they give it some basic data. I want this text to include this, this and this. So I had a client recently, they were writing reports and they'd asked ChatGPT to write these reports for them in English. And I have to say, I don't like that. I don't like the results that come out. I have to say, I've seen a lot of them now. And I know immediately within this second or third sentence, this is ChatGPT. It's not, you didn't write this. And that's not because I know that their level of English is not as good as ChatGPT. It's the way it writes. For example, I find it repeats itself. So it says the same thing in a slightly different way in two or three sentences, one after the other, which is like, why have you done that? Why have you told me the same thing in three different sentences, just using slightly different words? And I find that very noticeable. And I'm sure I'm not the only person who's noticed that. So I would just say to people, be really careful when you use it for creative writing and you're trying to sell it as your own. Maybe it's a job application, maybe it's a report. Be very careful because people are learning very quickly what it sounds like. And it has to me in a lot of cases. And maybe if you're really good at using it and you know how to prompt it better, you can avoid that. But I found that I've read a few texts recently and I thought, this is not real. This is ChatGPT. Yes. And I think this is a discussion that started on LinkedIn, I think, in these forums that we now have comments or even posts that people write with the help of ChatGPT. I don't know what the percentage is, but it's rising. And I think you have two parties now. People like it or they don't. And some people use it and others wouldn't. And this is a development. Interesting. And that's exactly what you say. People can notice, I guess. I wouldn't do that. Honestly, I wouldn't post something written by ChatGPT on LinkedIn because I want to bring in my own content. But I believe there's a big crowd out there who does more and more. It saves time. You know, of course, if you're posting masses of content and you need to post a lot, it does. You know, AI can be really helpful in creating things. But I think my caution would be, especially I do a lot. That's one of what I do a lot with my clients is job interview training and CV writing and things like that. And so many times someone said, oh, I asked ChatGPT to write my application letter. I look at it. It's amazing. And then I read it and think, no, it's not. Because it's got 10 sentences saying exactly the same thing. And it's all very generic and no authenticity whatsoever. You could be the same as the person next to you. And when you're applying for a job, that's not what you want. Of course, you could write your own and ask it to correct it potentially. I think that's much better. You know, when I meet my clients and they say, oh, I need to I need to write an application. I would never say, oh, I can write it for you. Because, of course, I could. No, we write it together. We sit down together. And so it's still their words and it's their application. And I just help them improve it and make it sound better. And to me, that's how you should use ChatGPT. Not just like, write me this, write me that. It's just lazy. Ultimately, it's kind of lazy, I think. Yeah. I mean, I totally agree with that. I think it's and I would always suggest to people, use ChatGPT really as a tool to give you ideas, maybe to brainstorm different topics or, you know, or even, for example, write something creative, but then not obviously use it word for word, you know, take things out, change things, try and be a little bit creative with that. But another thing that's quite good, I think, with the also with the levels, we talked about it before coming on, is this idea that you can ask ChatGPT to write text at different levels of English. And I think that is really cool. For example, you know, if you want to improve your level of English to, let's say you write something and it's a level A, A1 or 2, A2, and you want it to be a little bit more, yeah, higher, upgrade your English and go on to maybe intermediate English. And then you would say, please rewrite this as a B2 level text. And I think then you can always see the differences in the English. You can see the difference in the vocabulary. You can see the differences in the grammar structures and how they're getting more and more complicated. So I think that is a really cool tool just to, you know, get some idea of the different levels as well and how the words change, synonyms, all these things. So you can learn a lot just from that, actually, I think it's quite cool. And I think that's absolutely, yeah, that's absolutely the point. You can learn from that. Exactly. And that's the point. It's using it to learn, learning by doing, you know, see, use it as a tool to learn, not as in, I feel lazy and I can't be bothered to write this, so write it for me. Because that, to me, is going down the wrong, sorry, it's a bit like e-scooters. It's like, why do we need e-scooters? Quite honestly. They're a nice idea. It's fun. It's fun. It is fun. ChatGPT is kind of fun. It's a nice idea. But it's, you know, I see people, they get off the train and instead of walking 10 minutes, they get on an e-scooter home. And I think, do we really need that? You know, I think we're already not moving enough. I don't think we need a tool that makes us, and we're already not maybe thinking enough. So do we really need a tool that's going to take over all these bodily functions? I don't know if it's a good idea. So stay critical. I think that's a good idea anyway. I don't think the world, I personally don't think the world needs e-scooters. Well, it's a totally different topic. But I think this is the point. Don't, don't, these tools should be fun. Yeah. Okay. But they shouldn't make you lazy. Don't. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. But I think when you say fun, I think, I mean, I haven't really played with ChatGPT to the potential that you could. Oh, you can do really fun things. You can do some amazing things. Yeah, you really can. And like I said, I really enjoyed having my little Spanish conversation today. It was, it was fun. It was only like 15 minutes, but it was kind of entertaining. Yeah. And we're only learning now, learning to play with it. And I don't know where we will be in half a year. We might bring that subject up again and see how far it will have come by then. Absolutely. And maybe, yeah, we might have used it more then. So I think I asked this question before. Has anybody had a learner who used it already as a tool? Well, because I haven't. I haven't recommended it. And I don't know specifically of anyone who has. Apart from, like I said, people writing reports with it and things. But I don't know anyone who's using it really as a learning tool, Dave. Yeah. I mean, I try and explain the benefits to my students for sure. And I've shown them things like what I've shown or talked about today. And some people actually use it, especially for the writing emails in English. But again, it's this sort of laziness. And so they've maybe just, you know, I put it into German, asked it to translate it into English and then sent it. And then send it without. Yeah. And I say, well, you know, be careful with that. Because if you don't know what you're sending, you know, it could backfire. Yeah. And also, I think culturally, it's also maybe not always correct. And I think there's a lot to be said by, you know, I mean, it's very good. Don't get me wrong. I think ChatGPT does a very good job. Which, for example, it's better maybe than DeepL, because DeepL literally translates, not word for word, but it translates it in a more global way. Whereas I think ChatGPT would also consider cultural things like how to write a certain phrase, for example, at a certain level. So I think maybe that's where ChatGPT is slightly better than a translation like DeepL. But still be careful. Definitely. I think culturally, the interesting point, I don't know if many people know this. One of my clients told me this. I think Birgit noticed a while ago that me and Dave always say, please, when we talk to ChatGPT, we always say, could you please? Which is a bit of a British thing. We're still being British, even though it's a robot. We go, could you please give me some sentences? We're polite. We're nice to ChatGPT. And one of my clients, he sent me an article. I could put the link in the show notes. He sent me this article that actually there was a study from Stanford University, and they studied what responses you got depending on how polite you are to ChatGPT. Really? Yep. And the more polite you are, the better and the more accurate the results were. Isn't that? Wow. Really? Isn't that funny? That's good news for everybody. Yeah, it is. And so I just thought that was hilarious. And so I don't know why there was some algorithm or whatever it's using, but the more polite you are, it likes that. It's nicer to you and it gives you better results. Like in real life, doesn't it? Exactly. Well, that's quite, I mean, that's amazing because sometimes I catch myself writing, and then I put in the word, please, and I think, why am I writing please to a machine? But it probably loves you, Dave, because you're so polite. It's like, oh, what a nice man. Now I've heard that, I will be really polite. Could you possibly? Such a nice guy. I'm going to give him all my best results because he's so nice. Yes. But I think if you were to upgrade it, it would probably treat you even better. If you paid, yes, I'm sure it would. Absolutely. No, but we talked about that before coming on. I think it would be interesting what the difference is if you upgraded between the free version. We have the free version, right? And if you upgraded, what the differences would be in various aspects. So that's something for another, a future episode. Absolutely. And our final point was, the point three was? Yeah, language learning resources. I mean, you can ask ChatGPT what to look at, where to look. And maybe we can link this with our next topic because in our next topic, I can say that, can't I? Yes. We're going to talk a bit about football. Yes. And I have to talk about football in English, so a little bit of fun. We have three football fans here. Did you know in ChatGPT, you could probably get yourself a good list of vocab for football? Exactly. That's really helpful. Yeah, you can ask it for key vocabulary, how to talk about football. But now knowing this, you need to put your resources into ChatGPT, don't you? How can I get my book into there? Exactly. If your book's online, I think, I don't know, because it does know books and it can tell you. That's a line from this book on page. So I don't know how it does that. But how do you put it online? I mean, that's not a Kindle version, not an e-reading book. It's online. You need to Google that, Birgit, get your book. Yes, I will. Why Google it? You've got ChatGPT. Exactly. Ask ChatGPT. How do you find out about books? I told you earlier, I had this book and I asked it to give me a book summary and it did. You know, you just have to give in the title of the book and if it knows it, it gives you the summary. Wow. Absolutely incredible. You need to tell ChatGPT about your book if it doesn't know. I will. That's a good idea now. Send it the text and then it will know. Yeah. Can I ask another question? Because that has come up this week in my teaching classes or teaching with learners. You know, of course, in German it's KI. Yeah. So when somebody who's sort of not too advanced and not too trained in using this as an English vocabulary, they might, and I've heard that several times, they might translate it to KI. KI. Yeah. So you have heard that before. I have. And I find that very interesting that the switch doesn't take place because everybody has heard of AI too. And somehow, why has the term stayed separate? That's funny because when you say AI, they know exactly what you're talking about. It's not that they don't know that, but I've heard that too. They say KI. Yeah. Or KI. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's interesting maybe for some. That's the same thing. Definitely. Yeah. Okay. So next time, as Dave mentioned, we are going to talk about football, how to talk about football, how to, different vocabulary. I presume we're going to tell you about the different teams that we support and why. Yes. Not today. Complication. Dave, do you have a German team? I have. I follow a specific German team and Birgit does too. Do you have a favorite German team? Of course. Of course. Please don't say Bayern. Then you're not invited to the round. Then you're not invited. So you do have a team. Who likes Bayern? I know. I don't. I'm just checking. You like Liverpool. So I don't know. Who knows? You know. Everything is going to be fun. You've just given away which is my team for next week. Next time. Sorry. No, I meant your German team though. No, no. Okay. That's top secret. Oh, that's top secret. Okay. I think I could guess maybe. So hope you'll listen to us again next time. Take care and see you then. See you then. Bye. Thanks for listening. Thank you so much for pressing play today. If you have any comments, questions, or perhaps suggestions for future episodes, feel free to contact us at our website 3englishexperts.com. Have a great day and see you next time.