I remember vividly the moment I found out about ChatGPT. We sat in a tutorial and were asked to read an article in 5 minutes and discuss the content with our group. And there it was: “I’ll just copy-paste the text here then we will have a summary”, I heard from two chairs away.
I was not convinced, what was my teammate talking about? Was this safe? When I saw the result, I was shocked, that summary was simply perfect, just what we needed to complete the task. That day, as I went home, I couldn’t help but wonder: in how many ways could this chat make my life different? It didn’t take long to find out. A few nights later at girls’ night, my friend who had just broken up with a guy, was asking ChatGPT how to reply to a message to best convey her emotions. A few months later, I came back home for the holidays, and my mom was asking ChatGPT for a recipe to cook with a few ingredients that were about to expire. My mind was blown. Was this new technology going to change forever the way we approach tasks both in an educational context and in our personal lives?
Fast forward one year. I was in Lisbon for my exchange, and although it was not mandatory as the university was completely in English, I really wanted to learn Portuguese. Since I could not enroll in additional courses, and an external course was too expensive, I decided to try and learn it on my own. Being in a university with only international students, it was very hard to spot a native speaker. Where was I going to find someone who was available for free, accessible from any place I was in, who would not judge me, and who could keep up with my night owl schedule? That’s when I had the idea of asking ChatGPT to become my Portuguese conversational friend.
After studying some basics of Portuguese on my own, I was finally ready to experiment. I have started by asking simple questions, such as showing me a list of common words or sentences used in everyday life.
After realizing the potential of ChatGPT in this field, I have started trying to type longer sentences, asking if it could correct my sentences and give me tips to improve.
Soon enough we were having conversations, at first very simple ones, and each time I would increase the level of details of the conversations, for instance, writing prompts such as “Imagine we are at the sports club..” and giving more context to enrich the quality and increase the level of the conversation. That generated quite fun scenarios where the chat became really accurate about the characters and the role it was playing in specific contexts.
Sometimes it would generate some awkward statements, like when duo lingo makes you learn sentences such as “the cat is drinking water”, however as I used ChatGPT more and more, the tool itself also learned how to better respond to my prompts based on my needs.
Overall, these are just some ways that I used to get acquainted with a new language, however, there are many other creative ways to explore the potential of ChatGPT, for instance by creating engaging exercises to improve your grammar and vocabulary while doing something fun, making the whole process of learning more attractive[1].
As I reflect on it now, it is amazing to think how many uses we can make of GenAI. My experience with ChatGPT in the process of learning Portuguese was extremely positive, and even though my level of Portuguese is not the best, I was still able to make significant improvements. While before I was always a bit skeptical and would only think of ChatGPT as something that was taking over our way of reasoning and creativity, for the first time I was able to look at this technology as something extremely useful, that if used with moderation and acknowledging its limits, could be a helper, rather than a substitute for my abilities.
Would you try ChatGPT to learn a language? What are other creative and useful ways you were able to exploit this technology?
[1] Ter, S. (2024, June 19). Learning English with ChatGPT: A Comprehensive Guide. Medium. https://erkanyasun.medium.com/learning-english-with-chatgpt-a-comprehensive-guide-538b9b55832c
