A participant in the "Teaching English with AI" WhatsApp group asked ChatGPT how language teachers could use ChatGPT for teaching/learning. In seconds, the chatbot produced the following impressive-looking list of 20 procedures. But with a deeper analysis (with the help of color-coding), we can separate some useful suggestions from totally mindless WOW! reactions.
Writing practice: Students can use ChatGPT to generate written responses to prompts or questions, which can then be reviewed and corrected by the teacher.
Conversation practice: Students can use ChatGPT to practice speaking and listening skills by engaging in conversations with the model.
Vocabulary building: Students can input words or phrases they are learning and have ChatGPT provide examples of how they are used in context.
Summarizing texts: Students can use ChatGPT to summarize texts or passages, which can help them practice reading comprehension and summary writing skills.
Essay writing: Students can use ChatGPT to generate outlines or complete essays on a variety of topics, which can be reviewed and corrected by the teacher.
Sentence structure practice: Students can input phrases or sentences in the wrong order and have ChatGPT correct them, helping students learn proper sentence structure.
Pronunciation practice: Students can input words or phrases and have ChatGPT pronounce them, helping students improve their pronunciation.
Idiomatic expressions: Students can input common idiomatic expressions and have ChatGPT provide explanations and examples, helping students understand and use them correctly.
Reading comprehension: Students can use ChatGPT to generate questions about a text or passage, which can help them practice reading comprehension skills.
Grammar practice: Students can input sentences with grammatical errors and have ChatGPT correct them, helping students learn proper grammar.
Spelling practice: Students can input words and have ChatGPT correct the spelling, helping students improve their spelling.
Writing emails: Students can use ChatGPT to generate emails on a variety of topics, which can be reviewed and corrected by the teacher.
Dialogue writing: Students can use ChatGPT to generate dialogues between characters, which can help them practice writing and understanding spoken English.
Translation practice: Students can input sentences in their native language and have ChatGPT translate them into English, helping them learn new vocabulary and grammar.
Paraphrasing: Students can input a sentence and have ChatGPT paraphrase it, helping students understand the different ways to say the same thing in English.
Creative writing: Students can use ChatGPT to generate short stories or poetry, which can be reviewed and corrected by the teacher.
Research paper writing: Students can use ChatGPT to generate research paper outlines or complete papers, which can be reviewed and corrected by the teacher.
Songwriting: Students can use ChatGPT to generate lyrics for a song, which can be set to music and performed in class.
Script writing: Students can use ChatGPT to generate script for a short film, which can be acted out in class.
Debate practice: Students can use ChatGPT to generate arguments for a debate topic, which can be used to practice speaking and critical thinking skills.
Because some of the suggestions are so incredibly bad, we'll start from the worst and proceed to the best.
Mindless Garbage for Masochistic Teachers
The most obvious mindless garbage is highlighted in light orange (numbers 1, 5, 12, 16, and 17). Do we teachers really want students to ask a chatbot to generate a text, submit that text to us, and expect us to spend time reviewing and correcting an AI-generated text?? Beyond the massive waste of our time, exactly how does this improve the students' learning?
Missing the Mark (Some of the Time)
The suggestions in light violet highlights (numbers 4, 7, 9, 13, 18, 19, and 20) do not move students toward one, or more, of the stated pedagogical goals of the suggestion.
Having the chatbot summarize a passage (number 4) does nothing to help the student learn how to summarize (other than, perhaps, offering an example). On the other hand, a summary, provided by a chatbot (specifically instructed to respond at a low linguistic level), may help ELLs understand the gist of a difficult passage.
Using the audio output of a chatbot for modelling pronunciation (number 7) is sometimes questionable. There is a very wide range of computer-generated voices, varying in quality and accent. Yes, some of them actually sound human, but can they consistently give you the proper stress in grammatical context (e.g., CONtent vs conTENT) or dialectic differences (e.g., CONtroversy vs conTROversy and LABorotory vs laBORatory)?
Having a chatbot generate questions about a particular text (number 9), may indeed help a motivated student understand the text. But the generation of questions, per se, does not help teach reading if the student is not the one formulating the questions. Perhaps the AI-generated questions will serve as examples for future reading - but that depends on the learning style of the student.
Having a chatbot generating dialogs and scripts (numbers 13 and 19) will probably not teach writing (except, perhaps, through example). On the other hand, it will provide grammatically-correct texts that students could read (re-read and perhaps memorize). Acting out the dialogs and scripts would probably be fun and motivating (depending on the content). Teachers could help with the pronunciation.
Having a chatbot generate the lyrics of a song (number 18) does not motivate the students to be creative with language. The next logical step would be asking an AI music-maker to create the tune for the AI-generated lyrics. And finally, the students could feed the totally AI-generated song into an AI listener, who would generate a response to the song. Exactly how have the students learned language along the way?
The most outrageous flaw is pedagogical logic is number 20 . Although generating a perfectly grammatical argument with relevant lexical items, which students would practice (i.e., read and re-read) and then present (i.e., read or recited) to an audience, is probably a good exercise; the claim that asking a chatbot to generate a debate argument would "practice critical thinking skills" is laughably ludicrous!!
Suggestions for Highly Motivated Students
Many of the suggestions (in light blue: numbers 3, 6, 10, 11, 14, and 15) involve meta-learning, where the student focuses on the chatbot's production and/or corrections of language and why something is correct or incorrect. In stead of using language for communication of meaning, students examine and dissect language. Some students will respond very well to this type of pedagogy, but many students will probably find it boring and overly intellectual.
Suggestion number 11 (focusing on spelling) is particularly problematic because of homonyms, homophones, and dialectic difference in spelling and meaning.
Google Translate and other machine translation programs already deal with suggestion number 14 (translation).
The Best Suggestions
Asking the chatbot to explain an idiomatic expression (in light green: number 8), and give sentences with the expression, is probably a good use of the tool in language class. Let's just hope that the chatbot doesn't present incorrect information (which has happened with chatbots).
Asking the chatbot to be a partner in a conversation (in light green: number 2) is probably the most effective suggestion, on a pedagogical level, because it encourages students to be active language learners, interacting with a interlocutor whose grammar and lexicon is excellent. If the content of the conversation is interesting, then the student will be motivated to develop the conversation for its own sake. (This is what Dewey, Vygotsky, and Krashen were proclaiming as the best pedagogy.)