How to learn foreign languages with AI
AI can help you learn languages more effectively, but how?
Warning: This post is written 100% by a human. (With AI correction)
Without a doubt, AI is the most popular subject in recent years because it’s so powerful. You can use AI for writing articles, analyzing data, generating images and videos, and even developing apps, all of which can be done in seconds.
For learning foreign languages, AI can also help you in many ways. You can practice speaking with AI voice chats, let AI correct and explain your writing, etc. In the past, these practices required you to hire a language teacher or partner; it was expensive, and it was hard to start for people who were ashamed to speak to strangers. But now, everything has changed.
In this article, I will share the practices I am exploring to learn languages with AI. You can subscribe to this newsletter to receive more language learning-related posts and resources in the future. Let’s start.
Is it still necessary to learn foreign languages in the AI era?
Yeah, as I mentioned above, AI is so powerful that translating one language to another is very easy for it. So the question is, why don’t I directly translate the materials into a language I can read through AI, instead of learning the languages to read the materials?
It depends on the purposes for which you want to learn other languages. If you just want to read something online and understand what foreign articles are talking about, then yes, you can stop learning the languages. Just translate them into your native language with AI, and then enjoy your reading!
Besides that, if your purpose is to chat with foreigners to make some friends, work with colleagues from other countries, move to live in another country, learn the culture of a country, enjoy literature, movies, or music in foreign languages, or just improve your mindset, I think translating is not an ideal way to achieve these goals.
So, is it still necessary to learn foreign languages? Yes and no; it depends on your purpose. AI can translate well, but learning languages is more than just translating in most cases.
However, what AI can do is far more than just translating, too. In addition to directly translating for you, there are many ways you can empower your language learning through AI. It is a vast public knowledge base; you can access almost everything you want to know through AI, including almost all the knowledge of language learning. Maybe it is even better than some teachers.
Let’s start by sharing what I have explored; you can also share how you learn languages through AI in the comments.
Learning languages with AI
Basically, there are four parts of language learning: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. There are many materials on the internet for listening and reading; you can practice listening through podcasts, music, audiobooks, or movies. For reading, there are books, blogs, news, and newsletters like the one you are reading now.
Because listening and reading are inputs, you just need to listen and read repeatedly, look up which points or words you didn't understand on the internet or in dictionaries. You don’t need a tutor to guide you and correct your issues if you find the correct way.
But speaking and writing are different from listening and reading; you need someone to talk to, correct your mistakes, and explain why. In the past, it is hard to find such a person for most people including me, but now, AI is such a partner to learn with.
There are some AI products specifically designed for language learning, such as Speak. However, they are evolving rapidly, so I cannot provide accurate information; you can try them yourself. In this post, I will only introduce the way with general-purpose chatting AI products.
Writing
You can traditionally write an article and let AI check for mistakes, correct them, and explain them. For me, as a person learning English, I often send the following message to the AI chat to check my essay:
Following is a short article that I wrote to practice English. Please help me correct the mistakes and explain them, and then give me a score for the article at the B2 level.
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<The content of the essay>Usually, AI will send me back a corrected version of the essay, detailing every change it made. Then, it will tell you what your strengths are and what you need to improve for your current level.
You can follow the clues AI gives you for targeted learning with AI itself. If it says you need to improve your preposition usage, you can continue to ask it to explain more about prepositions. If it says you need to learn more about verb tense consistency, you can let it tell you more.
Regardless of the grammar or the usage of the language you are learning, you can ask it through AI and get a solution.
Or if you use AI chats in everyday life and want to practice your language skills more seamlessly, you can use the language you are learning to chat with AI and let it correct your expressions anytime.
In my Claude settings, I have set the system prompt to:
I am an English learner who is at the B2 level. If I make any grammatical or usage errors in English, please correct my language mistakes first, then answer the question I asked. If I ask you in other languages, please translate the question to English first, then answer me in English.And now, every time I chat with AI, it is practicing English as well. This approach is suitable for people who don’t want to spend a lot of time solely learning other languages but instead want to integrate them into their lives; it will provide more motivation.
You can also modify the prompt and use it for your language learning with AI. I have tried the prompt in Claude and Google Gemini; both of them work, but it doesn’t work in ChatGPT sometimes.
And immersing yourself in social media in the language you are learning is a nice way to learn as well.
For me, to learn English, I engage with social media platforms such as Reddit and Twitter. I follow topics I am interested in and reply to them sometimes. Every time before I post something, I have AI check the post for me to ensure there are no obvious mistakes.
Speaking
Most of the AI chat apps, such as Google Gemini and ChatGPT, have a Live Voice mode, which is a perfect way to practice your speaking. If you are learning English, there is an app called Pi that I am using; its voice is more natural than others.
Treat AI as a language learning partner, talk to it about whatever you are interested in. The difference is that it can be available on demand, providing you with timely feedback, and you don't have to worry about bothering it. You just need to speak more and practice more.
You can talk about anything to AI with Live Voice mode, just like talking to an old friend. No one should be ashamed to speak to AI, so for those who are easily shy, it also eliminates a huge concern, as the practice can be completed by just one person.
Hobbies, daily routines, learning methods, whatever you are interested in talking about, AI will respond to you appropriately. If you have no ideas about what to talk about, you can just ask AI to suggest a topic or play some word-guessing games as I do.
Another verified and widely cited way to practice speaking is called shadowing. It is a method in which you listen to audio material and repeat it immediately when you hear the sound. It’s useful when you are struggling to find topics to talk about with the aforementioned method. You can search for more information about shadowing on the internet; there are many resources about it.
But where is AI? Of course, using AI can also make this process more convenient. For example, you can generate a transcript for the audio you are listening to, so it will be clearer what you are working with.
Based on the shadowing, our team has many ideas about it, so we decided to develop an app for it with podcasts. This way, we can learn languages using a lot of existing audio resources. That is why this newsletter exists, for Dippod, the app we are building for language learning through podcasts with AI. You can subscribe to this newsletter to receive a notification when it is released.
Listening
You should have already guessed that podcasts are my most suggested resources for practicing listening. There are a lot of podcasters building awesome content that can help you learn languages, whether it's language-learning focused or real-world content.
You can put the podcasts in the background, set aside a specific time to practice, or do both (suggested). There are plenty of podcasts, so you can pick some that you are interested in and listen to them again and again until you completely understand every single word of an episode. Then you can switch to the next one.
Some podcast clients like Apple Podcasts provide AI-generated transcripts for podcasts. You can check them out when you are confused about listening to some segments. If you can’t even understand the transcripts by reading, you can also send them to AI and let it explain them for you. We will share podcast suggestions in future posts; subscribe to the newsletter to keep in touch.
Except for traditional podcasts, there are some blogging systems that provide audio narration for text posts, such as Medium and Substack. Additionally, some services can convert your ebooks, posts, or any other text to audio, such as ElevenReader. They are all great resources for practicing listening.
Movies are also great materials for listening practice, but they’re more difficult than podcasts and post-narrations without subtitles, and it’s easy to get distracted by subtitles. You can try them when you have reached that level where you can understand most of the content without subtitles.
When you can understand most of the existing materials, you can now practice with audiobooks. They are the best resource for formal language, as podcasts are the perfect everyday language resource.
Reading
If the language you are learning is English, then the best way to practice reading is what you are doing — reading online posts. There are plenty of online posts you can read for practice on Substack, Medium, or other more local social media platforms.
The ways of learning — listening, speaking, reading, and writing — are not completely independent and distinct. You are also learning to read when you are practicing writing and listening. For example, the content of social media platforms and the transcripts of podcasts are also reading resources.
Books are also the most important resource for reading, but just like audiobooks for listening, you need to reach a certain level before you can read books, or it will be too difficult.
Reading is the simplest part of learning a language because it is what you are most exposed to. So there's not much to say; just read more and memorize more words, asking about everything you misunderstood and were confused about with AI.
Motivation
Besides the methods of learning, motivation is as important as the way you practice. What drives you to learn a foreign language? How easily can I learn? What’s the result of the learning? You need to find the purpose, the easiest way, and the rewards, or you will abandon the learning after a few days.
If you are learning for work, for your career, it’s easy to find the purpose and the rewards. The purpose and the rewards are the same: getting a better job and increasing your salary. If you want to move to another country or immigrate, the purpose and the rewards are obtaining a green card and living without obstacles. You need to keep the purpose and the rewards in mind; recall them frequently. It will motivate you to learn the language.
If you are learning as a hobby, you can create some rewards for yourself, such as publishing something in public to make connections, and then enjoy the pride of communicating in other languages. As you can see, this post is just for this purpose. I am Chinese, but I can write something in English! Although it is not very good, but it is better than my past self!
AI can improve your confidence in publishing public content. Check the content with AI before publishing if you are not very confident about publishing in public. I am doing this for this post.
Sometimes the process itself is the reward. When you listen to a podcast episode and completely understand what the host is saying, isn’t it awesome? Next, you can challenge movies or books; think of learning as a game.
That's all for today's content. I hope it will be useful for you. Subscribe to the newsletter for more content if you like the post. See you next time.