I tell my Argentine buddy that I use ChatGPT to practice my Spanish and excitedly explain what it can do.
It can correct my mistakes, I tell him, and is able to teach me regional variations of Spanish, including Mexican Spanish, Argentinian Spanish and, amusingly, Spanglish.
And unlike when I chat with him on WhatsApp, I don’t have to take time zone differences into account.
My friend is less enthusiastic. “So you replaced me?” he jokes.
Of course I didn’t. The convenience and scope of an AI chatbot can’t match the joys of chatting with someone whose personality traits I’ve learned over the years. However, it is a useful addition.
And I’m just one of many people who have discovered the benefits of AI-based chat for language learning over the past few months.
A Costa Rican who works in construction tells me that his AI-powered keyboard has helped him brush up on his technical vocabulary in English. For example, finding an English word for a tool through the description saved him a lot of time.
A South African café owner has further improved his Spanish grammar with the help of AI. He had a hard time finding easy study aids, especially given his ADHD, so he started using ChatGPT to quickly create and customize study aids like verb tense charts.
Developers quickly caught on to this surge of interest, and there are now numerous apps that use open-source code to customize AI for language learners. These may be more suitable for learners than generic chatbots like the Replica virtual companion.
Blanka Klímová, Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Hradec Králové in the Czech Republic, says Replica has been useful for her students to practice informal English.
But conversations could get repetitive, voice corrections were lacking, and the chatbot would sometimes ask students for sexy pictures. “That was pretty offensive.”
In contrast, LangAI is one of the specific language learning chatbots launched in March by Federico Ruiz Cassarino. Mr. Ruiz Cassarino drew on his own experience of learning English after moving to the UK from Uruguay. His English skills improved dramatically by speaking on a daily basis compared to more academic methods. He now uses his own app to work on his Italian.
“Many people become insecure when they make mistakes in a language that they can hardly master even in front of a tutor,” notes Mr. Ruiz Cassarino. But a chatbot will not judge you. And the new wave of generative AI has progressed to the point of cultivating AI pen pals, that’s how he sees his product.
Rather than sticking to boring, prepackaged RPGs, the current AI lets you “talk about things that are interesting to you, which makes learning seem less of a chore”.
While many language learners use popular chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard to practice, Mr. Ruiz Cassarino believes dedicated language learning apps like his are useful.
“We worked really hard to make it tailor-made for someone who wants to learn languages,” he says. The team customized LangAI’s interface to match users’ vocabulary, added the ability to make corrections during a conversation, and enabled speech-to-text conversion.
According to Mr. Ruiz Cassarino, they are seeing impressive retention rates for an educational app. Of the users who try the app for around 10 minutes, around 45% are still using it a month later. They are now focused on building the subscriber base of people who are willing to pay for unlimited use.
In this context, they plan further developments such as the tracking of improved skills and the possibility to personalize the chatbot’s tone and personality (perhaps even to practice a language while conversing with historical figures).
Assoc Prof. Klímová, who is also a member of the research project “Language in the Human-Machine Era”, evaluated the applicability and usefulness of AI chatbots for students of foreign languages. This research suggests that AI chatbots are helpful for developing vocabulary, grammar, and other language skills, especially when they provide corrective feedback.
To stay ahead of the trend, mainstream language learning apps have integrated AI into their own platforms. Duolingo started working with OpenAI in September 2022, using GPT-4 from that company.
It seems unlikely that AI chatbots will completely replace Duolingo. Joy Ehonwa, an editor and writer based in Lagos, uses Duolingo primarily for learning French.
Recently, however, she has also been using an AI chatbot developed in Nigeria to improve her French.
She interacts with this chatbot, Kainene vos Savant, as she would with “an omniscient human friend.”
Ms. Ehonwa explains, “My questions are about ‘why’? When I fail an exercise on Duolingo, the app doesn’t do a very good job of helping me understand why what was wrong was wrong. So I ask Kainene. Even though I… I think a sentence should be a certain way, but it’s not. I ask Kainene why and she helps me understand why he can’t be what I expect as an English speaker.
If the older language learning platforms have weaknesses, so does AI-powered language learning. Users report that chatbots have a good command of widely spoken European languages, but the quality decreases for languages that are underrepresented online or have different writing systems. Many of the AI language learning apps are available for a limited number of languages.
Even in common languages, the chatbots make mistakes – sometimes they even invent words. One problem is that they deliver the text so confidently that it would be easy for a relatively new learner to take what was said as being correct.
Emily M. Bender, professor of computational linguistics at the University of Washington in the US, has concerns: “What kind of prejudices and inappropriate ways of talking about other people could they learn from the chatbot?” Other ethical issues, such as data protection, can also be neglected .
More business technology:
- How an autopilot could handle an emergency descent
- Can Amsterdam make the circular economy work?
- The “exploding” demand for giant heat pumps
- The chipmaker that became an AI superpower
- Why parking lots are the hottest space in solar energy
Nevertheless, Assoc Prof. Klímová believes that there will be a huge market for such technologies. And like many language learners, she points out that GPT-4, available with a paid subscription to ChatGPT, has made amazing strides in accuracy.
Though many teachers disagree, she believes, “It’s only a matter of time before artificial intelligence will replace us as foreign language teachers.”
While this may sound extreme, “teachers will still play an important role as mentors and facilitators, particularly with beginning learners and older people, as teachers have a deep understanding of each student’s individual learning styles, language needs, and goals.”
It will be crucial for language teachers to assess the added value of AI and its role in this context as more sophisticated self-directed learning becomes possible. As Assoc Prof. Klímová advises: “Technology will remain and we need to face it and reconsider our teaching methods and assessments.”
Add Comment