This week, Joe Dale, a UK Independent modern foreign language & technology consultant, joined me on the Growing with Proficiency Podcast and shared how to use ChatGPT in language classes. This week, you’ll learn how to use this tool to generate customized text, vocabulary lists, activities, and assessments to lighten the load of language teachers. Joe also provided tips on integrating ChatGPT effectively into your lessons, including scaffolding and differentiation.
However, Joe cautioned listeners of the podcast on potential accuracy, cultural sensitivity, and ethical issues when using AI in the classroom. If you listen to episode 26, you’ll have a comprehensive understanding of how to use ChatGPT to make your language teaching more efficient, effective, and engaging. Whether you’re a seasoned teacher or just starting out, podcast episode 26 is packed with practical ideas and strategies to take your teaching to the next level. Don’t miss it! Listen above, on your favorite podcast player, or HERE.
Teachers Are Busy
As teachers, we are so busy doing so many things. We’re creating resources, we’re creating questions, we’re creating the activities, we’re creating the lessons. Now, we have this tool, and I’m very excited to see how it can help us as teachers.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is an AI bot from open AI. It allows you to sort of correspond with it with it’s human like features. Joe explains that as a result of it being fed different amounts of information, you can, for example, start off by asking a question, and it will remember what you’ve asked it. So, when you say, “Can you summarize that?”, for example, it knows what “that” refers to because of the fact that it’s remembered what you’ve already put into a chat.
If you go to a new chat, which essentially is just a new prompt that you’re going to put in, it will not remember it from a previous chat. But if you have everything that you’re referring to in the one chat, it will remember the text that you’ve already inputted, which is incredibly useful, and that’s why people can almost forget that it is actually not a human, it’s a bot.
How ChatGPT Can Help Teachers
Joe shared that it could potentially save teachers lots of time and give them more opportunity of being creative because chatGPT is doing the heavy lifting of creating worksheets and saving time doing the basic tasks of language teachers.
I really like that you can use it as a learning assistant because you can give it some tips like if something is just too difficult for a level one student, you could ask, “Can you make it simpler? Can you make it more friendly? Can you have more repetitions of these structures? Can you make it funnier?”
This learning assistant is going to really help me put my thoughts out in a bigger and faster way. So, when my brain and my cognitive functions are really focusing on what is important and how I can make language comprehensible, accessible, and compelling to my students, and I don’t have to type the language because my learning assistant can do it for me, then that is huge for me and incredibly helpful!
Advanced Ways To Use ChatGPT
Joe also shared how to further use ChatGPT for more advanced and practical ways of helping teachers. One of the ways language teachers can use ChatGPT is for narrow reading where students are seeing similar text, similar structures, but there are slight differences. Other ideas Joe shared are to use ChatGPT for pyramid translations, tables for making parallel reading texts, and to produce a simple text in basic French, Spanish, German, etc., but aimed at a certain-aged child. As Joe and I discussed this AI tool, I saw how good it is for generating lots of different language learning exercises.
Listen to episode 26 to hear about all of the helpful webinars and examples he shared with me. You’ll find some of the links below, but head to the podcast page HERE to grab all the links and resources.
More ChatGPT Resources
ChatGPT use in language education Wakelet by Joe Dale
Language Learning with ChatGPT: Exploring Opportunities and Risks
ChatGPT Part 2
Joe Dale’s YouTube channel featuring Technology in Language Teaching (TiLT) webinars
ALL London webinars featuring Technology in Language Teaching (TiLT) webinars
ClozeIT and HERE
Gap Fill Tip on Word
Check out all of the resources mentioned in episode 26 HERE. And, find all of the episodes of the Growing with Proficiency Podcast HERE.
One Response
I am interested in creating teaching material in teaching Korean. Particularly, drawing pictures for relevant scenes, actions, and situations.