AI and Studying

 Lately I've been playing with AI as a way to study Korean alongside my book. I gave Chatgpt the following prompt:

Every day, give me a focused Korean practice session toward fluency. Use grammar and sentence-building exercises, have me produce Korean, then correct my attempts into natural Korean with concise explanations. Keep the pace manageable and gradually increase complexity, especially with sentence structures and verb forms.

Tomorrow would be my first session with the AI teacher, I'll share what I get each day so you all can study with me. 

Reboot…

​I’m rebooting my language learning. This time though I’m going back to Korean, and Japanese. I will be doing my studies via a combination of books, free resources and AI.

The first thing I did was look at the resources I have and ordered what I was missing as well as look at online free resources. The second thing I did was ask Chatgbt to formulate a plan for each of the languages I wanted to study using the resources that I found.

Korean

The first thing that I thought about was what I wanted to do for the study of Korean as I was already taking a class online with a great teacher. I decided that next year I want to take the TOPIK II test. The first thing that Chatgbt suggested was that I take a mock TOPIK I test to see if I was at level 2 or closer to level 3. So this weekend I took the test and got 146/200 which means I am closer to level 2 than I am to level 3. Next Chatgbt suggested some sites to help me study for TOPIK I and TOPIK II. I printed out the grammar and vocabulary for both. Finally, Chatgbt made a study plan for me which included a daily study plan that incorporated vocabulary, grammar, reading and listening.

Japanese

Finally, for Japanese I asked Chatgbt to design a study plan for me using a book that I just ordered online called Beginning Japanese. However, until my books arrive I asked Chatgbt to teach me Hiragana and Katakana and quiz me on them. 

Chatgbt is amazing help so far. It has helped me put together my study calendar and tasks. It has given me a bird’s eye view of how long it might take me to get through to my goals. 

This is what my study calendar looks like.

And this is what one day of studying might look like:

A typical Japanese lesson in Chatgbt looks like this:

I’ve also asked Chatgbt to quiz me on chapters from books. It made me good test papers with answers which showed me where I was doing good and where I needed to study more.

I hope this helps others in getting an idea on how to use Chatgbt in studying languages.

How to start learning a language

           Learning a language (or 3) is very tough. When you first start out you are very motivated and feel like you can put in a thousand hours a day if you can. Soon however, you begin to get less and less motivated and it is at that time that people start to get dejected and give up. This is especially true when you are studying on your own and not in a class setting or if you don't have someone to practice with. So what can you do to stop yourself from getting to this point in your studies? I've done a bit of research and watched a lot of YouTube videos so you don't have too. 😁

*Set Goals:

1. Think about WHY you want to study this language. Write out your reasons and then summarize them onto one page and put it somewhere you can look at it when you need motivation or a reminder of why you are doing this. 
2. Have one overall goal that you want to work towards. This could be anything from taking a test like TOPIK or the HSK to writing a letter in your target language to someone you admire like an idol, actor, writer, political or even a friend.
3. Start breaking that main goal into smaller goals, and put down realistic time limits on these smaller goals. To achieve this you need to do a little research into your target language and take into account how much you can realistically spend working on your studies each day. For example, when I first started learning Korean I found out that you can learn their alphabet in two hours so I set myself the goal of learning it in one week. I could only spend half an hour per day studying uninterrupted so I paced myself: 4 days to learn the alphabet and 3 days for review/mastery. And if I for some reason couldn't study on one of the four days I had time to make it up. 

These are my goals for learning Korean.

*Be gentle with yourself: 

          It is important to realize that there will be times when life gets in the way or you'll be just not motivated enough to do anything. During those times be gentle with yourself. Realize that what was not finished this month can be finished next month and if motivation was your problem look back at your goals and why you wanted to do this in the first place. 

*Don't compare yourself to others: 

          One of the biggest mistakes we make is to compare our progress to others. Some people learn faster while others take their time neither one if better than the other. You could be better at grammar and vocabulary while they are better at speaking or vice versa. If you catch yourself comparing yourself with others just tell yourself to stop. It does no one any favors. 

I hope this helps you a little with your language learning journey.