Most expats want to gain fluency in their host language, but many don’t. While there are a lot of reasons for this, one reason is the challenge of finding interesting content at the level of your language ability. In my case, the books/articles that are at my reading level are often boring to me, with content too basic to capture my interest—but if I try to read content that interests me (history, business, finances, philosophy, etc.), the language is so far beyond my ability that I give up in frustration.
I’m excited to say that I’ve found a great solution for this problem and that solution is this week’s tip: Use ChatGPT to supercharge your language learning.
I approached ChatGPT quite skeptically, having heard of its hallucinations and factual errors, but having tested it with the languages I know and am learning, I can now say my skepticism was misplaced; ChatGPT is an incredible tool to help your language learning. Here’s some of the ways it can be a huge asset to you.
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Get content at your level
As noted above, a big challenge for language learners is getting content at the right level: challenging enough that you learn new things, but not so challenging that you get frustrated or can’t understand it.1 This is a brilliant use of ChatGPT, because ChatGPT can produce stories or dialogues using words at a certain reading/grade level. The result is an incredibly powerful way to get endless content attuned to your reading level.
A few examples will show the power of this—but since I don’t know what languages you’ll understand, I’ll give examples in English and you can get a feel for how it works. Just pretend you’re learning English and you can see the power of this. I’ll show you the prompt I inputted into ChatGPT and then the result it gave.
Prompt: Tell me a 100 word story using first grade level English:
Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Lily. She loved to play outside with her friends and explore the world around her. One day, while playing in the park, she found a shiny rock. She picked it up and showed it to her friends. They were amazed by how pretty it was. Lily decided to keep the rock and put it in her pocket. As she walked home, she noticed that the sun was setting and the sky was turning pink and orange. She smiled and felt grateful for the beautiful day she had.
Prompt: Tell me a 100 word story using SAT level English:
In the depths of the Amazon rainforest, a team of intrepid explorers embarked on a journey to uncover the secrets of an ancient civilization. Led by a renowned archaeologist, they traversed treacherous terrain and battled against the elements in their quest for knowledge. As they delved deeper into the jungle, they encountered unexpected challenges and obstacles, but their determination and expertise saw them through. Finally, after months of grueling work, they uncovered a hidden temple filled with priceless artifacts and ancient texts. Their discovery would change the course of history and inspire generations to come.
Prompt: Tell me a 100 word story using GMAT level English:
As the CEO of a multinational corporation, John was faced with a daunting challenge: to revitalize the company’s stagnant growth and profitability. He assembled a team of top executives and tasked them with developing a comprehensive strategy that would leverage the company’s core competencies and capitalize on emerging market trends. Through rigorous analysis and collaboration, the team identified key areas for investment and innovation, ultimately leading to a successful turnaround and record-breaking profits. John’s leadership and strategic vision not only saved the company from decline but also positioned it as a leader in the industry for years to come.
Whether you’re at a first grade level or graduate student level in your second language ability, ChatGPT can produce content at the level that you request. It’s incredibly powerful.
Note: ChatGPT will do this if there’s some kind of external frame of reference for the difficulty of the language. So “grade level” should generally work, but as the examples above show, you can ask it to use language that appears on a specific language test—TOELF, IELTS, ACTFL, etc.—or on a standardized test—PSAT, ACT, LSAT, GRE, etc. That’s useful not only if you’re studying for that test but also as a way to calibrate the level of language difficulty ChatGPT provides.
Another way to accomplish a similar result is to ask ChatGPT to pretend to be a certain age (“tell me a 100 word story as if you’re 8 years old”). The language ChatGPT generates will then be related to the language someone that old could produce.
Get content that interests you
Another problem facing language learners, especially adult learners, is that many “graded readers”—books/articles that only use words a certain grade level—are written for children. It’s often quite boring, which makes reading a task you have to do in order to learn rather than something you enjoy. ChatGPT shines in solving this problem, as it can produce content on whatever topic interests and is useful to you. Sure, kindergarten economics will still be limited but it’ll be far more interesting than the Hungarian equivalent of “Mat sat on cat.”
Here are some examples—again, using English.
Prompt: Explain bitcoin in 100 words using third grade English
Bitcoin is a kind of digital money that you can use to buy things. It’s like regular money, but you can’t hold it in your hand. Instead, it’s stored on a computer. Bitcoin is special because nobody controls it like a bank or government. People all over the world can use it to buy things without needing to know each other. It’s also very secure because it uses special math to keep it safe. Some people really like bitcoin because it’s new and exciting, but others think it’s too risky.
Prompt: Summarize “rich Dad poor Dad” using 5th grade English
“Rich Dad Poor Dad” is a book about a man named Robert who had two dads. One dad was rich and the other was poor. Robert learned different lessons from each dad. The rich dad taught him about money and investing, while the poor dad taught him to work hard for money. Robert realized that the way to become rich was not by working hard for money, but by learning how to make money work for you. He encourages readers to invest in assets that generate income, such as real estate or stocks, rather than just working for a paycheck.
Prompt: Summarize the movie “Captain America” using 10th grade English
“Captain America” is a superhero movie set during World War II. The story follows Steve Rogers, a scrawny and weak young man who is transformed into a super-soldier through a government experiment. As Captain America, he fights against the evil organization HYDRA and their leader, the Red Skull, who seek to use a powerful artifact called the Tesseract to conquer the world. Along the way, Captain America forms a team of allies, including his childhood friend Bucky Barnes and the tough-as-nails agent Peggy Carter. The movie is a thrilling adventure that explores themes of heroism, sacrifice, and loyalty.
Whether you’re interested in pop music, philosophy, history, jig saw puzzles, economics, baking cookies, medicine, you-name-it, ChatGPT can produce content on a topic that interests you and at your language learning level.
One very powerful way I use this is to ask it to summarize books and movies that I’ve already read or watched in English. Because I’m familiar with the content/plot already, it gives me “mental context” to be able to guess at words that I haven’t yet studied.
Get content the length that you want
You don’t always have an hour to sit down and study a long passage; sometimes you just want a quick, 5-minute read. ChatGPT is there to assist you! In my prompts above, I asked ChatGPT to give me relatively short content—long enough for you to get a feel for what it can do, but not so long that you skip the results—but you can ask ChatGPT to produce something that’s 50 words, 1,500 words, or even an entire book! Whether you’ve got 5 minutes to study or an entire day, ChatGPT can get you new content that interests you.
Get example sentences for input flooding
One challenge I have in the language I’m studying is that more advanced words I’m studying can be quite abstract or have a large semantic range—that is, they can mean a lot of different things, depending on the context (for example, consider what “green” means in “green thumb” v “green initiative” v “green with envy”—that’s semantic range). I’ll hear the word used, or my friends’ explanation, or read a dictionary, but I can’t always grasp the meaning.
What I really need is to see the same word in a bunch of different contexts. This is a good use for ChatGPT; ask it to produce lots of examples using the word and you can better grasp the meaning through context.
For example, one of my students recently asked me to explain what “intramural” means. Here’s what ChatGPT said:
Prompt: Explain what intramural means and give me 5 examples
Intramural refers to activities or sports that are played within a particular organization, such as a school, workplace, or community center, rather than between different organizations. Here are five examples of intramural activities: 1. An intramural basketball league in a high school where students can form teams and compete against each other. 2. An intramural chess club where members of a community center can play against each other in friendly matches. 3. An intramural soccer tournament in a workplace where employees can form teams and compete in a fun and relaxed environment. 4. An intramural debate club in a college where students can practice their public speaking skills and argue different topics. 5. An intramural trivia night at a local bar where teams can compete against each other in a fun and social atmosphere.
ChatGPT can also help you do this to see examples of grammar and grammatical constructions. For example, if you’re trying to learn the difference between “that” and “which”, you can ask ChatGPT to produce some examples to help demonstrate their usage.
Prompt: Give me 4 sentences that use “that” or “which”
- The book that I borrowed from the library was really interesting. 2. The car which we rented for the weekend was a red convertible. 3. The restaurant that we went to last night had amazing food. 4. The computer which I bought last year is already outdated.
Note: asking ChatGPT to explain the grammar itself may produce errors. I’ve asked ChatGPT a few times to explain a grammar rule and it didn’t quite get it right. However, it’s fantastic at producing examples so that you can practice grammar or vocabulary.
Get contextual translations
There is a lot of linguistic content that doesn’t show up in a dictionary—think of names, cultural references, internet slang, movies, etc.—but ChatGPT can help explain it to you. Again, pretend you’re studying English and you encountered the phrase “slide into your DMs”. That’s not gonna be in a dictionary, but ChatGPT can help:
Prompt: What does slide into your DMs mean?
The phrase “slide into your DMs” is a slang term used to describe someone sending a direct message to another person on social media, often with romantic or flirtatious intent. It implies a person is trying to initiate a private conversation with someone they are interested in.
I’m sure there are many more ways ChatGPT can help you out, but these are the ones I’ve explored. Please mention other ideas in the comments so we can learn together!
Tips for getting the most out of ChatGPT:
- You don’t have to write your prompts in the language you’re learning; you can write prompts in your native language and specify that the output be in a different language. This is a powerful way to bridge the gap between what you know and what you don’t know. For example, ask ChatGPT for “a 150 word summary of Star Wars using 2nd grade French words and the word ‘bazooka'” and despite the prompt being in English, it will produce a French summary.
- Be specific in your prompts; ask for the language level you want, the subject that interests you, and the length you want—you can even specificy grammatical constructions! For example, you can ask ChatGPT for a 150 word summary of Les Miserables using 2nd grade words and using the word “transform”
- Protect your privacy and security. Remember that all your prompts are being transmitted via the internet to a computer system that may record or log your data and prompts and over which you don’t have control.
Last, ChatGPT’s responses are only as good as its training data; what that means is that if the language you’re learning only has a handful of speakers, is an unwritten language, or hasn’t been used much on the internet, then ChatGPT may not be able to help you much. But so long as the language you’re learning is widely used on the internet, ChatGPT will have trained on it and you’ll get tremendous results.
So there you go! A bunch of ways ChatGPT can help supercharge your language learning!
Other ideas?
I know I’m not the only one using ChatGPT in my language studies. How have you used it? What’s been helpful or unhelpful? Leave a comment below, drop me an email, or reach out on social media so we can learn together!
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Footnotes
- Linguist Stephen Krashen created the notation i+1 to represent this idea: input (i) should be above your level so that you learn (i+0 is exactly your level, so you wouldn’t learn anything new), but not so far above your level that you’re frustrated (thus you don’t want i+2). The goal is +1. ↩︎
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