Will ChatGPT Replace Language Teachers?

I’m an English teacher. Is ChatGPT going to replace me? Maybe.

Today we’re going to explore some  AI resources you can use to study a  

foreign language and some places where  you just can’t replace human beings.

So, I’m actually more of an accent coach than  an English teacher. I focus on American English  

pronunciation and spoken English. To me, that's  what’s more interesting than learning vocabulary  

and learning grammar. So I’m really going to focus on that as we work here. I think that’s  

how a lot of people learn that language. A lot  of people learn that language through books,  

reading and writing but they want to use the  language to connect to human beings in real  

life which often improves speaking and it could  be so frustrating to study English for 15 years,  

the expert in reading and writing it but  still not be able to understand people  

speaking it and that’s a problem a lot of my  students have and that’s the problem I solve.

So, could ChatGPT solve that  problem for my students? Let’s see.

I’m going to ask ChatGPT about  a specific phrase. The more  

specific you get with ChatGPT,  the better the results you get.

So the question is: Teach me the pronunciation  of the sentence: What’s he doing?

Okay so, this is a little strange. It’s  telling me that the word “what’s” has a  

vowel that rhymes with the word ‘cat’. That would  be “what’s” and that’s not how we say that word.

We definitely say what’s, more of an  uh sound like in butter. What, what,  

what’s he doing? The word ‘he’, okay it told  me about the long e sound but it didn’t say  

anything about the h. We can say it but a lot  of native speakers will drop the h. We can  

say it but a lot of native speakers will drop  the h. What’s he, what’s he, what’s he doing?

Let’s see. The word “doing” is  pronounced with a long “oo” sound,  

similar to the word “do”. We’ll that’s  not too useful. It rhymes with “cueing”  

or “viewing”. So that is useful if you  know those words. Put it all together,  

it would be pronounced, “What’s he do-ing”.  Okay, so it’s ChatGPT is only addressing  

sounds and as I’ve thought pronunciation for  the past fifteen years, I’ve learned it’s been,  

made more clear to me as I work with students.  that sounds are maybe like 30% of what’s important.

Let’s give ChatGPT a score for teaching  me pronunciation. The word “what’s”,  

it gave me the wrong vowel sound. 0 points  for that. That is basic. The word “he”,  

it didn’t tell me I could drop the h which  is a very common pronunciation. I’ll give  

it two out of three points. Doing. They gave me  information based on the assumption that I knew  

other English words like viewing. That’s only  a little helpful. I’ll give it two out of three  

points. Equally weighted with rhythm, linking  and stress where I got no information. That  

puts me at four out of eighteen points,  that’s a major F. I do not think ChatGPT  

is useful at teaching pronunciation.  What about teaching English in general?

So I wouldn’t use ChatGPT to study pronunciation.  But when it comes to grammar and vocabulary,  

how does it do? I actually think it can do a  really good job. I recently asked ChatGPT to teach  

me 5 common idioms. It did give me five idioms and  an example sentence for each one of them. Then I  

ask for more examples from one of the idioms and  I gave me more. So I do think this is useful.

I also went to ChatGPT and I asked it  to give me more intermediate English  

lesson and I kind of like what  they gave me. Let me show you.

So it gave me some vocabulary  and then a paragraph. Now,  

this is good and interesting. If I didn’t know  this vocabulary, it would be a pretty useful way  

to learn it but it gets even better when you  start mixing in other AI tools. So I went to  

a website called Naturalreaders.com and I put  in my paragraph and I had it read it for me.

Yes, I can describe my friend Sarah  who is extremely extroverted. She  

is always the life of the party  and loves being around people.

So it’s pretty good. I mean, it’s definitely  speakery like if I was giving a podcast. Not super  

natural for conversation but good enough. If I had  a student who was putting together a presentation  

and wanted to imitate a native speaker, doing that  presentation to practice, I would say this is a  

good route to go. I will also say and I would  recommend in the past, you can go to a website  

like fiverr, you can find a voice-over artist and  you can pay a native English human being to record  

it for you but obviously that’s going to cost  money. This is free. Now I don’t know how much  

audio it could give it. At some point a fee is  going to kick in, but this is a good way to get a  

handle on the pronunciation and flow. Right here,  we do have rhythm whereas ChatGPT wasn’t able to  

teach me the rhythm but when I put text in here  it is giving me a natural American English rhythm.

ChatGPT is not going to be a great pronunciation  teacher but it can definitely teach you  

vocabulary, idioms, phrasal verbs, probably any of  these prompts, it could teach you pretty well on.

Since ChatGPT didn’t do a very good job on giving  me feedback on my pronunciation, let’s go to an  

app that uses AI to give pronunciation  feedback. This app is called Elsa Speak.

So Elsa Speak, I actually chatted with that  founder. She is very sweet, I love what they  

are doing and they have included some of  my videos in their app. So, full disclosure  

there. They are not totally unknown to me, I  have a pre-existing relationship with them.

Let’s see how Elsa Speak  does with my pronunciation.

Uh, alright.

Nice.

Ooh, it said excellent and I sound like  a native speaker. Now, as a teacher,  

I knew exactly what to do to make it now  sound right. And this is a problem a lot  

of my students have is their sounds might  be accurate, my pitch matched their pitch,  

my shape of stress. Everything matched it  except their placement. My placement was  

terrible. I stuffed all my sound up into  my nose and that’s not natural American  

English. This gave me a hundred percent. It  said I sounded like a native speaker. So,  

this is a problem. Is apps an AI can’t fully  capture all of the characteristics of the voice.

But if I went around talking like  this which is what I did with my app,  

I would be hard to understand and also,  I wouldn’t sound very natural. And I’m  

totally exaggerating that of course, but a lot  of my students have placements that’s too high,  

too pinched, not very natural sounding. So,  the fact that this app can account for that,  

it can probably coach me on my  sounds somewhat but I would never  

have a student who will rely on this  to get good feedback on how they sound.

Nice to meet you.

Okay, so now it looks like it’s going to  be checking my S consonant sound. Let me  

hear what happens if I make  a TH sound instead of an S.

Nith to meet you.

Hmm. Again, it gave me an excellent. It  heard an S. This is what tricky, S is an  

unvoiced consonant. Different from zz, Z, where  my vocal cords are also producing sound. Unvoiced  

consonants especially through a microphone  and a speaker can be harder to tell apart so,  

it’s an S sound, I made a TH sound. Not accurate  but it told me a hundred percent native speaker.

Wish.

Okay, it looks like it’s now testing the SH.  

Another unvoiced consonant.  Let’s see if I can trick it.

Wif.

Oh good. Here it definitely, it noticed, I  got to get my glasses y’all. Sorry about that.

It noticed that my SH sound was not right. But  it didn’t tell me, it didn’t tell me what I did  

wrong. It just tells me how to make the SH. It  would be more useful it if could tell I did an  

F and if it could say, ‘Hey, your bottom  lip was touching your, the bottoms of your  

top teeth. We don’t want that. Bring it down  and make an SH sound. Also, it’s description  

of the SH. It actually doesn’t say anything  about how to make the SH. It’s good to know,  

hey, I don’t have the SH but if I don’t understand  how to make it, then it’s going to be a problem.

So this AI voice coach app couldn’t help  with placement and it was only somewhat  

accurate on sounds. It couldn’t  tell me each time I did a sound  

incorrectly and it couldn’t tell me what  specifically to fix to sound more natural.

Okay, so I’m going to stop there. You know, I  don’t have any problem with people using apps  

like this to get some feedback, but the  problem is when someone is having a very  

hard time with their accent. Other people  are having a really hard time understanding  

them. And when people only use an app and  they’re not getting actual human feedback,  

they’re just not going to really be able to  solve that problem in my opinion. Now of course,  

I’m an in-person pronunciation teacher so, I’m  biased but I am imitating student problems and  

it’s not diagnosing them. So, if you are wanting  to work on your accent with a human being,  

I can't recommend my Academy highly enough, you’re going to love it. Rachel’s English Academy,  

check it out but anyway, this video is not about  promoting myself, it’s about assessing learning  

language online. My question at the beginning of  this video was: Will I be replaced? Not yet. Now,  

the AI can and will get much better. Will it  be able to diagnose things like placement?  

Will it be better at diagnosing things  like the wrong unvoiced consonant? Maybe.

And will it be able to give really helpful  information on the changes to make like:

Can it give me really helpful information on  how to make the SH? Maybe. And if it does,  

you know what? I bet that AI bot scraped  my videos to learn how to make the SH.

Here’s the thing. I’ve really thrown myself into  studying Spanish over the past 3 months and for  

20 years, 25 years I’ve been teaching English,  I always say both as a teacher and as a language  

learner, don’t use just one resource. It’s not  comprehensive enough and it’s going to get boring.  

I tell everybody to use several resources.  Use apps. Use real human teachers, use books,  

use AI. Use YouTube channels, I love going to  YouTube channels searching for Spanish topics  

after I have taken a class in that topic. I like  watching four or five different teachers teaching  

me the same topic. The more that you engage with  a language, the further you’re going to go with  

it. And I also think the more different resources  you use, the better things are going to stick with  

you. For example, if I learn a word in class and  then I see it in a Netflix show, and then it comes  

up in conversation when I’m chatting with a native  speaker in Spanish, that is going to settle in my  

brain a lot more than having just learned it in  class. So some of my favorite resources that I’m  

currently using to study Spanish are: I’m taking  online classes with a company called Lingoda,  

I’m following YouTube channels, I have a couple  books that I’m reading. One of them is a Learn  

Spanish through stories book and one of them is  like a grammar workbook. I’m also listening to  

a couple of podcasts and I’m going to Netflix  and I’m finding shows that are in Spanish. Not  

Spanish-dubbed but the native speakers in that  show are speaking Spanish. Those are a little  

tricky for me, I’m not very advanced. So, what I  actually do with those is if you’re watching on  

a mobile device, your phone or your iPad, you can  slow down the pace. You can’t do it on a TV yet,  

I don’t think but what I do is on my iPad, I’ll  watch the show in Spanish at .75 speed with the  

Spanish subtitles on. Otherwise, I can’t keep  up, I don’t really learn very much but when I  

do it that way, I hear and I see how phrases are  put together, it’s helping me improve my grammar  

and also getting chunks right like learning a  word is sort of useful but learning a phrase  

in which you would use that word is really  useful and so I love learning it that way.

So if you’re learning English, use ChatGPT, sure,  love that, use four or five other resources. If  

you’re really focused on pronunciation and you’re  an intermediate or advanced learner, check out my  

Academy, Rachel’s English Academy, you’re going  to get real human feedback on a regular basis.

Are you using AI for language learning  or for anything else in your life,  

I will say as I’m starting  to use it and get to know it,  

I am finding it very useful. How are you  using it? Let me know in the comments below.

Be sure to subscribe with notifications  on because I absolutely love being your  

English teacher. And keep your learning going now  

with this video. That’s it and thanks  so much for using Rachel’s English.