ChatGPT: Should Language Teachers Be Worried?

Hi there, Steve Kaufman here again, and I want to talk again about

ChatGPT, artificial intelligence and its impact on language learning.

You know, I enjoy doing these videos.

Uh, some people say, you know, you always say the same thing,

you're a big bag of wind, whatever.

I don't mind, people are entitled to their opinions.

Uh, but I do enjoy doing these videos and sharing my ideas

with you, and I get feedback.

One person said, you know, the effect of GPT is going to, to render all the

language learning apps, uh, irrelevant.

Uh, there's also fear on the part of some that it'll, uh, you know,

affect the role of the teacher.

I don't think it should.

Uh, and I'm gonna explain why.

So, if I look at Duolingo, which has, uh, apparently incorporated some

aspects of ChatGPT in their system, I don't fully know how, and, and, and

all the details, but I, I looked it up on the, on, you know, Google and what

they're incorporating is essentially role playing and error correction.

So yeah, it's possible that, um, a person could sort of individually set

up role playing activities with ChatGPT.

Uh, and in these role playing activities, ChatGPT could also correct whatever it

is that they type in to their, you know, dialogue with ChatGPT, uh, independently.

Uh, a learner could, could write an essay or whatever and

have it corrected by ChatGPT.

So does that make the teacher unnecessary?

I don't think so.

I think we have to look at...

and, and by the way, I saw on some of the websites that I visited, the suggestion

that well, uh, you know, ChatGPT may lighten the load for teachers or might

make it, you know, less necessary to go to, uh, you know, uh, substitute teachers.

This idea that there's this hierarchy of established teachers, permanent

teachers, and substitute teachers, I don't see a big difference between

them, because basically the role of the teacher is to motivate the learner.

The classroom is largely a social place.

It's where people meet, it's where the students meet each other.

It's where the teacher meets the students.

In an ideal scenario, out of this classroom environment comes an

enthusiasm for learning the language.

That's what happened to me, not the 10 years that I did French school, where

the classroom was just boring, but when in first year university at McGill,

I had a professor that made French civilization so fascinating for me

that I decided to really pursue French.

So that's an example of the vital role that a teacher can play, and it's

possible with ChatGPT because ChatGPT can generate, uh, content, can correct

things, provide a motivated learner with some opportunity for, you know, studying

on his or her own, having his or her material corrected, or maybe before

submitting an essay, having it corrected.

Or in the worst case, having ChatGPTwrite the essay for him or

her, which I gather they're looking at ways of, you know, making that more

difficult to do without being detected.

So some of these opportunities are there, but the teacher, whether substitute

or the main tenured teacher, call it, still has this tremendously important

social role because language is social.

Language is communicating.

Communicating with people, communicating with history, communicating with

sound, communicating with the written word, and it's up to the teacher to

make that motivating, interesting.

And, and certainly as an independent learner, I would not use ChatGPT

for correcting my writing.

I have no interest in that.

Um, my use of the language will be what it is.

It'll gradually improve as I talk to people, as I hear how the native

speaker uses the language, as I listen to content of interest I expect that

my vocabulary will grow, my familiarity with the language will, uh, increase

and, uh, the frequency of my areas will gradually, you know, diminish.

Um, but I know from experience that being corrected doesn't mean

that I get it right the next time.

So it's just, you know, yeah, if...

I'll do what I feel like doing in the language and that probably will not

include an essay for ChatGPT to correct.

I am personally also not interested in having a role playing exercise

with a ChatGPT, however, I can see where a teacher could assign that.

Uh, and therefore the ChatGPT then is a resource available to the teacher to,

you know, assign an activity, say role playing or interacting with ChatGPT.

Or, uh, asking a student to write something for ChatGPT to correct,

which therefore means that the teacher doesn't have to correct it.

So there are all these ways in which ChatGPT becomes, uh,

uh, an assist to the teacher.

Even though it's not a great interest to an independent learner like me, it

enables the teacher to, uh, you know, achieve what the curriculum requires

the teacher to do in the classroom.

But fundamentally, the teacher to me is a mo...

a motivator, and I don't think ChatGPT is gonna remove or substitute for

the need for a teacher to motivate learners, but it can be used by a

teacher to lighten their load in terms of correction, in terms of dreaming up

role playing situations, uh, and for the truly independent learner like myself,

probably not all that relevant in those roles, in the roles that dual lingo has

decided to, you know, assign to cChatGPT.

However, where I am more optimistic is, is using ChatGPT to help

generate, you know, learner content at, particularly at the intermediate

or beginner, intermediate level.

Uh, but even then, as I've said before, we need to consume so much content and

ultimately we want to have compelling, interesting content, authentic content.

And so ChatGPT would have a limited role.

Uh, I am much more interested in seeing how we can use Whisper or some of this

other technology to facilitate the transcription of the massive amount of

excellent compelling audio content that exists and how we can better integrate

that into a, you know, uh, a learning platform light LingQ with our sentence

view, maybe better timestamping.

These kinds of things to facilitate or to make it more efficient and

more compelling for learners and make it easier for learners to access

more difficult content using the functionality that we have at LingQ.

So those are the kinds of applications that I see for AI call it, or maybe, uh,

improved, uh, text to speech where we don't notice the difference between the,

uh, natural voice and text to speech.

Those are some of the things that I'm more hopeful.

Uh, to me at least as an independent learner, I think ChatGPT has

more limited application.

However, I can see where it can, uh, lessen the burden of language teachers.

So a little bit of a, you know, a meandering piece there on ChatGPT

again, and, and, and whether it will actually threaten, uh, language

learning apps as one of my viewers suggested, like LingQ for example,

or threaten the role of teachers.

So I hope you found, you found that interesting and uh, you can have a

look at some of the other discussions on this subject that I've had.

Bye for now.