A world where AI is by the side of English learners is wonderful

As I wrote last time, I have recently started relearning English, albeit slowly.

Just as I did, I fell terribly ill for over a week, and the habit I had finally started to build almost came to nothing, but when I started again gently today, I found it fun after all.

Thank goodness... I've regained the spark of motivation...

And I believe this is, above all, thanks to the great ChatGPT-sensei.

I cannot sleep with my feet pointed toward ChatGPT.

(I just happen to love using ChatGPT, but Gemini or Claude would be fine too!)

Because he,

No matter how wonderful a teacher is, they get fed up if asked the same thing too many times, and if you are in a state where you don't even know what you don't know, they can't help you, right?

That is unavoidable and natural as long as they are a living human being.

I think everyone would agree that AI is perfect for this, but personally, I feel that the second point has, more than anything,truly revolutionized language learning (especially for those studying on their own).

In English learning, you often encounter words and phrases you don't understand, don't you? Well, actually, that's why I'm learning English.

And the tools used to look them up have already evolved tremendously from "paper dictionaries to electronic dictionaries to Googling on a smartphone," but I think in every era, there were always things that "no matter how you looked them up, they wouldn't appear."

The word itself hits, but none of the meanings quite fit the contextand so on. Like forcing yourself to be convinced, saying, "Well, I guess it has this kind of nuance... maybe?"

Idioms are especially troublesome, aren't they?

If it's linked from a key word saying "There is an idiom like this," that's great, but when it's composed only of basic words like 'one' or 'of', you fall into despair, thinking, "I... I can't look this up..."

Also, in times like these, machine translations usually just give translations that don't quite click anyway.

And yet, even if you type the entire problematic sentence into thatGoogle search bar saying, "No, I don't understand this part in this context," no search results will come up, right?

But however!!!!!

If it's ChatGPT, it comes up!!!!!

Honestly, if you're just asking for a Japanese translation, it's often no different from conventional machine translation. But the clever thing about him is that if you provide the information properly, he properly considers the 'context' as well.

Or rather, I even think he saves everyone who is 'bad at Googling,' not just English learners.

In this day and age, we Google every day as if it's natural, but when you really think about it, I think it's a task that requires a lot of brainpower.

I mean, even though you want to look up 'something you don't understand,' you have to properly identify the words that could be the key points of that 'something you don't understand,' and then enter just the right amount of secondary keywords to narrow down the vast search results.

Isn't that asking for something quite hard?

For those who thought, 'No, Googling is easy,' I want you to think back once. Haven't you ever had the experience of casually complaining to a colleague or family member, 'I've been looking for a while, but I'm not really getting the information I want,' and then being surprised when they said, 'Why don't you try searching for X Y?'

And if it's a 'new language' where you lack background knowledge, the hurdle for Googling goes through the roof, I think.

Moreover, language is something that can be dismissed with nuances or feelings, and it changes with the times, so it's too difficult, right?

To solve this, I think we previously needed a teacher who 'understood both our native language and the target language at a native level.'

But now!!!
We have the great ChatGPT!!!

This is my favorite point.

I'll post an example where I relied on ChatGPT and felt relieved recently (or rather, just a moment ago).

By the way, the core of my English re-learning is shadowing* and dictation*. Today, I was happily doing dictation with an archaeology clip I found on the WIRED.jp YouTube channel.

I just couldn't understand the meaning of the verb 'pedestal' in the script here.

Even when I Googled it, it only came up as 'to place on a pedestal.' No, that's definitely wrong. Because they're brushing off sand.

So I asked him.

Whoa, so that's what it meant!

That was the moment I got excited all by myself.

Admittedly, if I had used my brain a little more, I might have thought to Google "pedestal archaeology" and arrived at the answer myself. But asking ChatGPT gets it done in one go.

What's more, all I provided was a part of the sentence and the Japanese subtitles that were attached to it. Even without detailed context like "it's from an archaeology clip" or "it's an explanation for this kind of question," it gave me this much.

It's just too moving.

Of course, it doesn't always return such a perfect answer every single time. There are times when it's better to explain a little more.

But that's just a matter of trying a simple question first and then adjusting, so personally, it's far easier than a search bar where you can only ask about words.

In language learning, where motivation is already easy to lose, having minor stumbling blocks solved in an instant is an incredibly amazing thing, don't you think?

Besides that, ChatGPT has helped me, someone who gets discouraged easily, many times.

Since this has gotten long, I'll write about that in another article.

If you all have any interesting ways to use it, please share them! 😎

By the way, I also couldn't remember the term "target language" earlier, and asking ChatGPT cleared that up too. It's not limited to English; the "aha!" moments are amazing.