Is Ai Going to Replace language classes?

Do you need to be techie to learn French with AI?

Last week I interviewed Megan Coulter, AI business expert, about how you can use AI tools like ChatGPT to help you learn French.

You can watch our whole interview here, or read the transcript below.

Dr. Nat: 

My name is Dr. Nat Amgott, the owner of Elevate French, and today we're talking about how to use AI or artificial intelligence to learn languages in this live today. 

We have a super special guest today, Megan Coulter, who will be joining us shortly. And she's an expert in AI, how to leverage AI in our day to day,  and an expert in how to use AI in business. 

So without further ado, I'll bring her on. We’ll be talking not just about French, but about how to use AI with languages in general.  

Thanks for being on today. Well, I thought we'd start out with a little bit of an introduction. Tell us what you do. I'll pass it to you to introduce yourself.

Megan Coulter: 

Hi, my name is Megan. I am an entrepreneur. I was a nurse for the first 12 years of my career, and then transitioned into being a copywriter, so writing words for businesses and other entrepreneurs as a copywriter. So first off, I’m not very techie. When AI first came up, I felt very scared, especially with all this stuff about how it writes everything for you. And so I was just kind of ignoring it as much as I could for a while. 

And then I started looking into it and see what it can do. I started to see how helpful it is and I wanted to teach other people how incredible this tool is to help you. You don't have to be super techie. I am not super techie at all. But it's really really easy to interact with it. I especially like ChatGPT, that I can just help you in so many ways.

Dr. Nat: 

Thanks for the introduction. Megan. I think it's really interesting what you mentioned about not having to be super techie I think sometimes we think that we need to be really techie to do an Instagram Live, which I'm always Googling around to make sure I press all the right buttons when I bring somebody on live. So this is really comforting to know. We don't have to be techie as language learners. We don't have to be experts in technology to use AI. Is that right?

Megan: 

No, not at all. I’m not techie and I feel really really comfortable with AI. 

Dr. Nat

One question I've gotten from my students is, “How can I keep up with my French between the classes that I'm taking?”

 So for example, my students have two weeks left of class, and then maybe they're gonna take a break from classes for a little while. Is there a way that they can use AI in the meantime to keep their French fresh or any language learner for that matter?
Megan: 

Absolutely. Even if you just use Chat GPT, chat GPT is really good with languages. It’s very easy and very text based, like texting with a friend. 

So you can text in French or you can just say, hey, I really want to practice my French with you. 
And then a really cool feature if you have the Chat GPT app on your phone. There's a free chat feature and the voice is actually pretty good. It sounds like a person that you're talking to. I played around with it earlier. 

My French is many, many years in my past. And I'm just getting what I get from following you now. But I tried talking to them a little bit and I said “Can you talk to me in French?” And the thing is, it's still all text based. So it can't critique my pronunciation. I can practice words with it, though, by repeating words that it says to me and I can practice grammar, as well.

Dr. Nat:  

That's so cool. I love that you've tried that and I really like hearing about this ChatGPT way to practice your speaking and writing. Is that with the paid version or the free version?

Megan: 

You know what?  I have the paid version. I'm not sure of the free version. I actually think that it still works. And then the thing that's really cool is when you're doing the hands free speaking there's a little off bubble on the screen. And you're talking back and forth. When you close out of the conversation, the whole conversation is there in text. So it was just really cool for me while getting back into French by doing this. I had a conversation in French that I could understand from home. 

This is a great extra thing because you know probably for a lot of us when you're speaking with somebody and they're chatting with you, it goes so quickly! So I missed certain things, but I was able to go back to them afterwards and see the conversation right then with the transcript, which was so cool. And there was also a part where my pronunciation wasn't great, and it it wrote a different word than what I was trying to say and so that was great feedback for me. 

Dr. Nat: 

That’s a really amazing way to practice. I personally don't have the paid version yet. I'm a Gemini girl, formerly Google Bard. I love it. I feel like with the free version, it just sounds a little more natural. And so I played around with it a little bit for language learning. My colleague and I, we're writing a chapter for this language learning textbook about how AI can be really helpful for pragmatics. 

So what is pragmatics? Well, let’s say your husband is making dinner and the music is up too loud. Instead of being saying “Turn the music down,” we’ll probably say something like, “Could you please turn down the music?” Or we could ask all these nice ways, like “That music is kind of loud.” We might not even ask! And then in different languages, we do this in different ways, but chat GPT and Gemini are still getting there with that. It can be a really fun exercise that I like to sometimes with my students. I’ll say “Let's look at that and compare it to what we heard in this video. It doesn't sound natural.”

Megan: 

When I was talking before about what it's capable of and what it's not capable of,  that’s an example. It doesn't speak the same way that we do. It doesn't really understand the nuance, human emotion and stuff. Like you were talking about. There's so much like human interaction that it doesn't quite get. 

And so, at least at this point, the way that I see AI in the way that it's growing. It's not going to replace people. Oh and being able to have that kind of interaction with people in conversation with them like hearing how you do that and hearing how you would have a conversation. When do you say please? When is it implied? Like those kinds of things you could learn so much better about. 

Dr. Nat:

Yes, it will be exciting when AI gets better at pragmatics. Let’s talk a little bit more about these headlines in the newspaper how AI is “going to replace us all.” 

From your perspective, of course I'm interested, is it going to replace language teachers as well as the language learning process in general? What do you think about that?

Megan:

So I think that it can help people if you are traveling, and you don’t want to make the effort to learn a whole new language, it can be really helpful in helping you communicate while you're there. 

But I think that a lot of us who want to learn another language, it's the beauty of learning another language and the skill of learning another language and wanting to immerse ourselves in it and the culture. Like if you want to learn another language, it gives you so much more than just the technical parts of the language, which is AI is giving you.

Learning a language is giving you that ability to communicate with somebody and to actually enjoy learning a language. I guess I think of it like if I'm talking to somebody who's Deaf. I can write something to them and they can understand it, but I would rather learn American Sign Language. I would rather learn the language and be able to communicate that way. 

And so I don't think it is going to replace language learning for anybody who wants to learn. And then I think for teachers and really for most professions, I think that an AI is going to be this tool that enhances things for us to get some extra tools. It makes the workload a little bit lighter, so that there are certain things that we'll be able to offload to AI, like even in your classes or some things. You have more time to visualize feedback or talk to people or there's more you have more time to do the creative and like human parts of your job. 

Dr. Nat:

So you’ve mentioned ChatGPT and Google Bard/Gemini. Do you have any other related tools?

Megan: 

So actually, things like Duolingo and Rosetta Stone use AI to make the lessons personalized for you. So based on how you're doing and what you're doing there's a tip. You probably don't realize when you get recommendations on Amazon and when Spotify makes a special playlist for you. There's all kinds of things that we interact with every day that use AI.

Dr. Nat:

I like that you brought up Duolingo. Every year they have an online convention called DuoCon. And this year, one of their things that they talked about how they're starting to use AI with kind of giving feedback and generating activities like on the backend. 

For me, AI tools are good to review and supplement and especially Duolingo helps with vocabulary retention, but I don't think that using any of these tools on their own can teach you French and have you speaking confidently, unless you just want to order a water or something. 
Megan: 

That was exactly the roleplay that I did with it earlier! I ordered a water and a croissant! 

I actually had a conversation with somebody who was a student in one of my courses and she is a college professor. And she was talking about how she has a little bit of fear around AI. And she had a really, really overwhelming amount of work. And it wasn't just one thing but there she was super overwhelmed and stressed. She said that she was sleeping like three hours a night that week. 

She teaches teachers and there’s teacher shortage right now. And there are these accelerated programs where people can go through the college program way, way faster than you typically would, much faster than a four year program. And so people are going through this really really quickly. And she was in lecture with them and she said something in passing that she expected them all to really resonate with and she said they all look totally blank. They had no idea what she was talking about. And she was talking about what her teaching style is.

So she realized that none of them knew the teaching styles. They weren't able to identify what their own teaching style was. So they would know how to lean into their natural strengths. And she said she went home that night and she she wanted to put together a quiz that would help people identify what their teaching style is. And then give them examples of how they could teach to their natural strengths. 

She said she sat down to write it and mentioned that you know what? Maybe we can make this faster for me. She went and she asked ChatGPT and it gave an okay response. She’s the expert in teaching styles, Not AI. So she had some tweaks. She had some feedback for it  because wasn't like perfect. She gave that feedback. And then the next version of it was perfect. And then she said okay, so what are some activities that my students can use to lean into the natural strengths? Again, she had to tweak it a little bit. She said she estimated that she saved 8 hours that day in putting stuff together, so it was just a great example of how ChatGPT can be a huge time saver, without replacing her expertise. 

Dr. Nat:

Okay, so you mentioned that you don't need to be a technology pro to use AI. Can you talk a little bit more about that because believe it or not, I’m not always comfortable with all the technologies. And in my classes, we already use Zoom and we use another platform and I think that's a good amount for me and my students right now. So if somebody's feeling a little bit hesitant towards adopting a new technology, what might you say to that?

Megan:

I have to say as somebody who has played around with a lot of the conversational models. I see a lot of people who are teaching AI or trying to get people to buy prompt guides, who make it seem intimidating. They say things like “The output only as good as the input” and “If you sub one word, you'll mess up everything.” 

But it's so much easier to learn how to input and prompt really well. It's so much easier than you would think. You use natural language. I really think of it when I sit down and play with it. Like I'm instant messaging with a friend. I talk to it like I would talk to a friend or a colleague, so I can ask him for help and what it gives me that's not quite right I can give exactly the feedback that I would give a human. And I don’t even have to feel bad about it if it's not quite right like I'm a little bit of a people pleaser.! 

You can just think “Okay, I want to sit down and talk to this person or this thing and if it gives me something that's not right. I can say that's not the right. I can tell it I was thinking more like, here's my sample.” You’ll probably be blown away at what you get out when you talk to it like that. 

I think just kind of take the first step and try and be willing to experiment a little bit. Try it out. And you'll be really really pleasantly surprised at how user friendly it is. I still have issues getting my microphone and my camera to connect on the Zoom. I am not techie. And I think that a lot of AIs are like the easiest thing. Again, if you go back to like, how it's already incorporated and things that we like, I don't know that I'm using AI when Spotify is giving me personalized playlists, but I am and it's great with me the experience.

Dr. Nat

That’s such a good point, Megan. So once again, for people just watching, we don't have to be tech experts to practice our languages with AI. There's one thing that I believe you said Megan, and I wish I could remember where it might have been in one of your lives or videos. It was a couple of months ago and I keep forgetting to tell you because I've been doing it ever since you said that. You said to ask AI some questions before you ask it for the prompt. And so I've been doing that when I'm using it for any number of things and it's been so helpful. So if you can help me if I'm saying it incorrectly but I believe before you ask for something, like maybe you're going to ask it to have a conversation with you. Like you're getting into an Uber in France or something and you say “Hey, I'm about to ask you for this. Can you ask me like five questions that are going to help you do a good job with this activity?” Is that Is that right? Is that how you do it?

Megan: 

Yeah, I actually so I leave it a little bit more vague than that. That's a really good way to get comfortable with prompting is you can say “You be the driver. I'll be the customer. Ask me any clarifying questions you have before we begin.” Because you might have filled in all the blanks. And other times it might have a whole bunch of questions to give me the best response. And putting that in the prompt really helps. Sometimes it will give you like 20 questions at a time, which sometimes is overwhelming. You can tell it to ask those questions one at a time. Give me a chance to just talk about it like a person and when you do that and I'm just ready to go. You're about to ask me to do a roleplay with you, which I think is a great activity idea that has just asked for clarifying questions. The AI wants to know who you are in the scope of this activity. 

Dr. Nat:

That's really helpful. Thanks, Megan. These were all really amazing and creative ways to use different AI tools for  language learning and to learn a little bit more about how they work and how to use them.. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you do? Well, I know you introduced yourself but you want to tell us about anything that you're doing in your business now and how can people find out about you and follow you for more tips for how to leverage AI? 

Megan: 

if you want to follow me on Instagram, which I think you'll probably click on my profile here. I also have a course. It's a lot of audio I do. I have a private podcast for my course. So you can listen to it while you're walking out the door, you're getting ready in the morning or whatever. And so you don't have to carve out special times. And I have a course on AI prompting techniques that will open in two weeks. So you can follow on Instagram or on my email list which is all linked to my profile. My email list is always getting the information first. So and then if you're on my email list, you also get a weekly newsletter where I share AI news and how it’s changing every week. And then a weekly Tip of the Week. So it's just a quick little update. I really focus on something that's actionable. So you can put it to use right away. 

Megan’s new course “Prompt Pro” is coming soon! Check out her website to stay in the loop and learn more about using AI.