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822. ChatGPT & Learning English PART 2

In this series I am evaluating ChatGPT as a language-learning tool. In this part I’m experimenting with role-play conversations, job interview practice, creating texts and dialogues and seeing if it can help you prepare for Cambridge exams like IELTS or CAE.

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Episode Transcript

Hello listeners,

This is part 2 of a 3-part episode in which I am playing around with ChatGPT in order to see how it can help you learn English. 

ChatGPT is a sophisticated AI chatbot. You can ask it questions and give it commands and it responds instantly. This is the most advanced AI chatbot I have ever used and it is quite impressive how it can do so many different tasks. We’re all finding out how we can use it and how it can be useful as a time-saving tool for many things, including learning and teaching English.

Of course ChatGPT is not without its critics. Some of those criticisms include the fact that ChatGPT will probably encourage cheating and will make it harder for institutions like schools to detect cheating. Noam Chomsky the well-known linguist and intellectual has described it as high-tech plagiarism, because it essentially regurgitates other people’s work and doesn’t provide citations or sources for the information it provides, and also people are suggesting that ChatGPT or AI in general could ultimately lead to a lot of people losing their jobs. 

Does that include me, and other English teachers like me? Can ChatGPT replace English teachers, content creators or even the need to practise English with humans at all?

I’m not entirely sure, and we’re all working these things out at the moment, since this is perhaps the first time this kind of technology has been so accessible and now everyone’s using it, learning about it and thinking about it.  

There are very interesting debates about this going on, but in this episode I’m focusing mainly on things you can do with ChatGPT, seeing how it works, and evaluating it’s effectiveness as a language learning tool. 

This is part 2. In part 1 of this I asked it to create a study plan as if I was an upper-intermediate learner of English, which it instantly wrote for me. The advice was presented very clearly and a lot of it was pretty decent advice at first glance, but was it appropriate advice for the learner profile I wrote? Was the information a bit generic? What experience or research was its advice based on? We don’t really know. 

Then I checked its ability to correct English errors and to explain those corrections, which it seemed to do quite well, although it lacked the ability of a human teacher to see the bigger picture and to use emotional intelligence, and then I started testing its ability to have a natural conversation, which it struggled with – mainly because as an AI language model it doesn’t have any feelings or opinions of its own and apparently these things are absolutely vital elements for a good conversation.

But is it possible to persuade ChatGPT to forget that it’s an AI chatbot and to pretend to be someone else, like a celebrity that you’d like to chat to, or your English teacher who can correct your errors while you chat?

This is what we’re looking at in part 2 here.

Also, coming up are these questions:

  • How well does it handle role plays in order to let you prepare to use English in specific situations?
  • Can you simulate job interview situations with it?
  • Can it create useful texts or dialogues for studying with?
  • Can it help you with exam preparation by providing sample written texts in response to FCE or CAE writing tasks?
  • Can it give you good advice for doing Cambridge exams?
  • Can it create reliable, useful exam practice tasks to help you prepare for IELTS?

Well, let’s find out now as we continue to play around with ChatGPT. By the way, there is a PDF script for all the things I am saying in this episode, including all the prompts I am using. You can get it on the page for this episode on my website – link in the description. If you are watching on YouTube you will see the text on the screen and I recommend that you watch this in full screen mode so you can see the text more easily.

OK, so let’s continue and here we go…

Conversation role plays for specific situations

If you need practice of using English in certain specific situations, you can ask it to help you.

I am a hotel receptionist. Can you help me deal with customer complaints?

It just gave me advice, like an article about how to deal with customer complaints. 

You can ask it to create sample dialogues for you, for different situations.

Can you make a dialogue between a hotel receptionist and a customer making a complaint about their room?

It creates a pretty good model dialogue. The language you can see is professional, and polite and a good example of the kind of English you would need in that situation. 

ChatGPT is good at this kind of thing. But, as a teacher in class, I might want to make sure this dialogue contained certain target language which I want to present and practise. 

Again, there isn’t a brain there looking at the bigger picture, guiding you, interpreting your needs and reactions, anticipating and planning as it prepares learning materials and activities for you. 

Conversation can be hard to maintain. 

You need to give it very specific instructions if you want to converse with it. Otherwise it will just generate a dialogue. 

Let’s do a roleplay. You pretend to be a hotel customer with a complaint, and I will be the receptionist. Can you also correct my English errors during the roleplay?

It just created the dialogue, writing lines for both people.

Let’s see what happens if I re-write the prompt more specifically.

Let’s do a roleplay. You pretend to be a hotel customer with a complaint, and I will be the receptionist. I will start by writing “Hello, can I help you”. Then give your response and wait for me to reply before writing the next line.

Can you also correct my English errors during the roleplay?

It’s very difficult to persuade it to do this.

Job interview role plays

Can you interview me for a job as a TEFL teacher at a new language school in Paris?

This worked quite well. It generated questions one after the other. It also responded when I asked for clarification. 

Let’s see it it can help you prepare for an interview for a specific position.

Can we do a job interview role play? I’ll input a job advertisement and can you then interview me for the position?

You can input all the details from a job advertisement. 

Just paste all the text from an online job advert, like “Marketing manager job advert” or “TEFL teacher France job advert” or “Podcast host job advert”

Inputting a large amount of text can confuse ChatGPT and it tends to just summarise the text. But then you can say “Ask me interview questions based on the job description I gave you”.

It should ask you some pretty good questions, relevant to that job, which will allow you to simulate the interview on your own, or at least prepare some answers. You could type your answers into ChatGPT and ask it for feedback.

But beware of just practising English through typing. Don’t forget that in the real world you have to speak spontaneously and you have to use social skills while doing it including things like body language.

Sample dialogues or texts

Ask it to produce sample texts or sample dialogues which you can then study with.

To be fair, this isn’t really necessary as there are so many texts and resources already available for you, including ones which are specifically created to help you learn English, but yes they are in published books and materials that you might not have immediate access to. Also, it’s simple to just go to ChatGPT and ask it to create any text or dialogue you want, following your specific instructions.

Can you write a 300 word text containing useful phrases for talking about using the toilet?

No speaking: Remember, Chat GPT won’t “say” any of these sentences because it is only in text form.

Can you create a 200 word story to present the use of narrative verb tenses in English?

What I want from this is a range of verb tenses. Past simple, past continuous, past perfect, with good clear examples of how those forms are used and how they are different to each other.

Did it do that?

Was it a good story?

Can it help with Cambridge Exam test preparation?

Let’s see if it can do a Cambridge First Certificate writing task. 

Sample answers can help us to practice our writing by providing a model which we can learn from. 

Let’s input a task directly into ChatGPT.

CAE Writing Part 1

You have received this email from your English-speaking friend David.

From: David

Subject: touring holiday

Some college friends of mine are visiting your area soon for a week’s touring holiday. They would like to travel around and learn about your local area and its history.

Can you tell me about some of the places they could visit? What’s the best way to travel around – car, bike or coach?

Thanks,

David

Write your email.

Write 140 – 190 words in an appropriate style. 

Dear David,

It’s great to hear from you!

I’d be happy to give some recommendations for your college friends’ touring holiday in our area.

There are plenty of places to visit and explore around here. If your friends are interested in history, I would suggest they start with a visit to the local museum, which houses exhibits on the area’s past, including its early settlements and industrial heritage.

Another must-visit is the old castle, which is one of the most famous landmarks in the region. Your friends can take a guided tour of the castle to learn about its history and its role in the area’s development.

As for the best way to travel around, I would recommend a car. There are several car rental agencies available in the area, and it’s an efficient and flexible way to travel and explore. However, if they are more comfortable with public transport, there are several coach tours available that take visitors around to the most popular sites.

I hope your friends enjoy their time here and get to experience everything that the area has to offer.

Let me know if there’s anything else I can help with.

Best regards,

[Your Name]

Can you give me some advice on how to do a Cambridge FCE writing task, like the one I gave you?

The answer was pretty good but it got some things wrong.

  • It said that I should use a formal tone, but this isn’t always the case. 
  • The email to David shouldn’t be formal. In fact this advice contradicts what it did in the writing task. It used some informal language there. 
  • It didn’t refer to any assessment criteria.
  • I’m not sure ChatGPT is consistent or reliable enough to replace proper English language teaching.

Ask it to create IELTS practice tests

I asked it:

Can you create an IELTS reading section 3 practice test?

It created a test which looked good at first glance, but it was not a proper section 3 reading test. 

The test format was different and did not follow the true, false, not given format of IELTS part 3. 

So this means it is not providing sufficient practice for IELTS reading section 3. 

Each part of IELTS is specifically designed to test different reading skills and each reading test is very carefully created to test those skills. 

Chat GPT didn’t do this to the same standard as you would find in proper IELTS test preparation materials.

Part 2 ending

That is where we are going to stop part 2.

I hope you’re enjoying these episodes and finding them useful.

Don’t forget to leave your comments in the comment section if you have something to say. 

We are going to continue in part 3 of this episode, which will be available soon. In fact it might be available for you now – check the episode description for links.

In part 3 I will be attempting to get answers to these questions:

  • Can you use ChatGPT like a dictionary?
  • Can it give us the same information about words that we can find in a good dictionary?
  • Can it give us correct definitions, information about parts of speech, pronunciation, example sentences, synonyms, antonyms, collocations?
  • Can it provide information about the etymology of words and phrases?
  • Can it transcribe things into phonemic script? 
  • Does it accurately transcribe things into British English pronunciation or is it just standard American?
  • Can it convert between different dialects of English, e.g. will it convert American English into British English, or into specific dialects of British English?
  • Is it able to help us to use the right sentence stress, word stress, pausing and intonation when reading things out loud?
  • Can it help us practise grammar by creating quizzes or tests? Are those tests reliable?
  • Can it help you to remember vocabulary with tests and quizzes?
  • Can it help you remember words and spelling with mnemonic memory devices?
  • Can it create text adventure games?
  • Can it adapt its English to different levels?
  • What are my overall thoughts and conclusions about ChatGPT?

All of that, coming up in part 3!

End of part 2

327. The LEP Photo Competition – Please check out the photos and vote

Hello listeners – this episode is all about the Luke’s English Podcast photo competition which I launched in December in episode 313. I’ve received loads of photos from listeners and they’re now presented on the page for this episode on my website, and they look fantastic, so please do have a look at them! In this episode I’m going to tell you how you can vote in the competition, and I’m also going to teach you some specific vocabulary and expressions for describing photographs, which is particularly useful if you’re taking a Cambridge exam like FCE or CAE. That’s what’s going to to happen in this episode, so let’s go!

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Just before we start, I want to thank you for your support – either through donations or the audiobook offer (this is where I talk about donations and sponsors – but it’ll just take a couple of minutes)

Thank you if you’ve made a donation – you’re basically keeping LEP alive, I hope you realise that. If you want to show your appreciation for LEP you can – just click a donate button on the website and make a contribution (the amount is totally up to you).  LEP is also made possible through some sponsorship from Audible.com. Basically, I get a small referral when my listeners sign up to a trial with Audible, which is basically Amazon’s audiobook service. The trial lasts 30 days, and includes a free audiobook download of your choice. Normally they’re 20-30 dollars each, but you can get one free with this offer. You can download any book you like, and if you don’t like the service, just cancel and keep the book, no strings attached.

If you’re wondering which audiobook to get, let me tell you about the bestselling audiobooks on Audible.com this week. #1 is called The Now Habit by Dr Neil Fiore and it’s all about skills and strategies for overcoming procrastination. #2 is Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (or Sorcerer’s Stone in the USA) – yes, all the Harry Potter books are now available as audiobooks and they’re really popular – constantly in the top 10 downloads. In fact, the whole top 10 this week is filled with other Harry Potter books. Get the first one yourself and dive into the world of Hogwarts, Professor Snape and he who must not be named. The first book has a rating of 4.9 – which is outstanding. It’s read out by British actor Jim Dale, who according to reviews, does an excellent job of bringing the story to life. #3 in the list is The Martian by Andy Weir. It’s a novel which was recently made into a film with Matt Damon, directed by Ridley Scott. I really enjoyed the film – it was a witty and exciting story of a man who gets stuck on Mars during an expedition and has to find a way to survive – and how does he do it? Well, luckily he’s a botanist – that’s an expert on plants. So he decides to survive – and how does he do it? he creates a farm inside the space station and then grows potatoes in his own poo as fertiliser. That might sound disgusting but it’s actually really really resourceful and clever isn’t it! It’s one of the many original and intelligent things about the story. The film is oscar nominated and is very funny and gripping and apparently the book is even better than the film, which is usually the case. It’s got a rating of 4.8 out of 5 on Audible. Alright, so that’s the top 3 books on audible.com. Just go to teacherluke.co.uk/audible or click the audible logo on the website. That’s it, I’m now going to shut up about my sponsor, and move onto the photo competition. :)

You can see all the photos below, but please read this text first :)

The LEP photo competition entries are here! On the page for this episode [hello you’re reading it  right now!] (below) you can see all the photos which were sent to me in the competition, arranged in a randomly generated mosaic. I hope you agree that it looks really cool.

I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone’s photos. Remember that the only condition was that you included some evidence that you’re listening (e.g. headphones or an LEP logo or something). The closing date for the competition was the 15th of January, so it’s now way too late to send me your photos. Sorry if you only just found out about it now – you’ll just have to wait for the next competition to come along!

You can now vote on your favourite photo(s). Please see below for the voting rules.

Nice to see you!

It’s absolutely fantastic to get a window into the lives of my listeners, even just a little bit with these snapshots that some of you have sent to me. I know there are many more of you out there – I have a large army of LEP ninjas who like to lurk in the shadows and just listen, only coming out sometimes to leave a comment and then whoosh spring back over the wall and into the night! By the way, I’ve had quite a few first time comments from ninjas and it’s nice to hear from you.

Back to the photos – It’s great to see the different environments, landscapes and weather that you are in while listening. Also, it’s really good to see some of the faces of you my listeners around the world.

Many of the photos are very charming and also funny. There are some real gems in there! (a gem is a precious stone, but it’s also a word we use to describe something which you think is particularly good – e.g. someone you really like e.g. “She’s a real gem isn’t she?” or “there are some real gems in there” meaning, there are some particularly good photos in there) I’m very proud of my LEP community. Thanks for your photos!

How to vote

  • Just add a comment under the photo(s) that you want to vote for. You don’t need to give your name, but you can if you like. Make sure you use the word ‘vote’ or ‘choose’ in your comment, so I know it’s a vote.
  • Don’t vote in the comments section under the episode – please vote under individual photos by clicking on them and then clicking on ‘comment’.
  • Please include either the word “vote” or “choose” when you vote. E.g. “I vote for this one!” or “I’d like to choose this one as the winner!”
  • It would be nice if you gave a reason for voting in your comment! E.g. “I vote for this one because…”
  • To leave a comment, just click on the image. Then click in the bottom right hand corner where it says “Comment”.
  • You can vote for as many photos as you like.
  • The winner is the one who has the most votes. There will be two runners up as well.
  • Voting ends on 5 March 2016 – my Dad’s birthday.
  • Feel free to comment on other photos too. That would be cool.
  • To find all the photos just go to teacherluke.co.uk and click the red button on the side which says “LEP PHOTO COMPETITION” – you can see it on the side under the LEP mug pic and under the email subscription button, and above the Audible logo. Click it and you’ll get to the page for this episode. You’ll see all the text that I’m reading and then all the photos are there for your viewing pleasure.

Click here to see all the photos now, if you like

Here’s some language for describing photos

It’s useful to know how to talk about photographs, especially if you have to describe them in a Cambridge exam like FCE. Here are some phrases that we typically use while doing it. Listen to the podcast to hear me demonstrate them.

  1. in the middle e.g. In the middle of the picture we can see a really cute puppy!
  2. at the top e.g. You can see his headphones at the top of the photo.
  3. at the bottom e.g. At the bottom of the picture you can see that he’s sitting on the toilet!”
  4. in the corner
  5. in the top left corner / bottom right  corner
  6. on the right side / on the left side
  7. hand – on the right hand side, on the left hand side, in the top righthand corner, in the bottom lefthand corner e.g. In the top left hand corner you can see a turtle in the pond. / On the right hand side you can see his headphones dangling from a tree.
  8.  in the foreground E.g. It looks like she’s studying maths because you can see what must be her maths book in the foreground.
  9. in the background You can see the rest of the orchestra in the background.
  10. the picture shows… (someone + -ing) The picture shows the view from his window and a pair of headphones dangling down in the foreground.
  11. in the picture we can see… (someone -ing) E.g. In the photo we can see Julien doing some stonemasonry while listening to LEP.
  12. there is… there are… There are lots of images of people travelling or in movement. There’s one picture which seems to have been taken on top of a mountain!
  13. present continuous tense In this picture we can see that Ewelina is running a marathon while listening to LEP!
  14. someone + -ing + while + ing This is a photo of Fernando listening while driving. 
  15. Present continuous + while + -ing In the photo you can see Gabriella who is doing some ironing while listening to LEP.
  16. it looks like (something is -ing) / it looks to me like (something is -ing) E.g. It looks to me like Alexander is doing alright. or It looks like Carlos is reading music and playing the piano while listening to LEP, which must be difficult!
  17. It’s a picture of… E.g. This is a picture of Zdenek cycling to work in the snow, which looks pretty slippery!
  18. …which… – we use this to just add something to the end of a statement (not just to a noun, but to the whole statement). E.g. Some people have sent photos with babies or members of their family, which is really lovely.
  19. Out of focus /  blurry / blurred
  20. Over exposed
  21. Saturated
  22. Modals of speculation in the present, e.g. “It must be freezing where you are!” or “It looks like the traffic is really busy in Sao Paulo, which must be pretty frustrating – although it might give you more listening time”, “You can see that Mark is wearing his hat right over his eyes, which might make it hard to see where he’s going – but he’s probably a force trained LEP Ninja, so I expect he’s just using the jedi mind trick.” “In this pic we can see that Didar has a  pen and paper ready while listening. I guess he might be writing vocabulary notes or making a transcription”.
  23. I imagine… I imagine that’s a nice thing to do while listening to LEP.
  24. I expect… I expect it took ages to paint that! or I expect she’s on her way to school.

I really think you should check out these photos. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Overall it’s just brilliant to see all these images collected together as a whole, and to explore all the photos individually to see the different situations around the world in which you’re listening, and there are some real gems in there (a gem – this means something that’s particularly great – e.g. you’re a real gem!  = you’re great, and I like you a lot!). So, there are some real gems in there.  I’ll now let you explore the photos for yourselves.

A quick re-cap of the rules: Please please please vote for the one(s) that you like by using the word “choose” or “vote” in a comment under the photo(s) you are voting for. Also, please make any other comments that you want to express. I encourage you all to mention things you like about the images.

Voting closes on March 5, and then after that I’ll do another episode in which I announce the winner and talk in a bit more detail about the photos. Remember, the winner of the competition gets an LEP mug and a t-shirt or bag, and two runners up get an LEP mug each. Those are the prizes, but for me – it’s not the winning that counts, it’s the taking part.

Where can I find all the photos!? You might be asking. You can find them all by going to teacherluke.co.uk clicking on the red button that says LEP Photo Competition. That button will be on the right, just under the email subscription button and above the audible logo. Click that and it’ll take you to the page for this episode where you can see all the photos. Just scroll down past all this text that I’m reading, and bob’s your uncle.

Here are all the photos from LEPsters :) Click a photo to see a bigger view and to leave a comment

LEPphotoPiC