Week 10: What AI can bring to teaching – ChatGPT

Hello again, welcome to my blog! Today we are going to talk about one of the most popular arguments of this moment – the artificial intelligence (AI).

 

Now that the development of AI is inevitable, we as language teachers need to embrace and change with it. How can AI help our teaching and how can we influence our students to have the correct understanding of AI? I will use ChatGPT as an example to discuss what AI can bring to our teaching.


Surely this isn't the first time we've discussed how AI has changed language education. In week 6 I introduced you to Yoodli, a website that uses AI to help users practice speaking. It can listen all the time, as well as give instant feedback, making it a great convenience for many users with speaking practice needs. Today we will no longer limit our range to speaking, but to the impact that AI has brought to English language learning and teaching in general: ChatGPT.

 

l  What is ChatGPT?

It likes an online chat box, the difference is that the person you are talking to is not a real person, but a trained AI. Based on continuous learning and training with humans, ChatGPT is able to find the most appropriate answer to your questions.

Screenshot from ChatGPT (https://chat.openai.com/)



l  So how does this relate to English teaching?

Try to ask your ChatGPT this kind of questions: design a lesson plan about simple past tense, or English speaking activities ideas for young learners. What does it tell you?

 

Screenshot from ChatGPT (https://chat.openai.com/)

As it shown, ChatGPT offers quite a few interesting suggestions and has even formed a decent plan for you to follow. But you might say, if AI is able to write lesson plans for teachers, then what is the role of teachers? Yes, with the help of AI, many people believe that humans will be too dependent on AI in the future, but when we take a closer look at the answers provided by AI we can see that they are too general and lack key details, which will then need to be revised by the human teacher. Furthermore, classroom teaching is real-time and teachers need to always be prepared for what happens next, much of which is unplanned. So, don't worry, the role of the teacher is irreplaceable.


If ChatGPT can offer us so many suggestions, then why not put them to use? There will always be times when our inspiration stops and it would be helpful to have some suggestions to explore to point our learning in a brighter direction. ChatGPT can be very useful not only as a teacher, but also as a language learner, providing advice such as learning plan, giving feedback, giving advice and so on.





 

Please don't forget:

What ChatGPT can do at the moment, as language teachers and learners, is to help us, is to provide ideas and thoughts. It cannot do the job for us! Think of it as a learning tool that maximises its benefits.

 

That's it for this post, thank you for reading! I know there is a lot we can talk about like using AI in our teaching, but AI is still developing and we should prepare for it with an open mind 😊






Comments

  1. xuteng 221783015 April 2023 at 04:51

    ChatGPT is really the most powerful artificial intelligence I have ever known! Your blog carefully introduced the features of ChatGPT with text, images, and videos, which gave me great inspiration! Perhaps in my future teaching process, I will have a powerful assistant. Meanwhile, you have used various symbols and emoticons in your blog, making it clear in structure and rich in content. But could you please increase the font size? I feel a bit tired while reading. However, I have some hesitation in introducing ChatGPT to my students. Will this lead to them gaining something for nothing?

    ReplyDelete
  2. KunyanICT16 April 2023 at 13:32

    I believe it is meaningful to explore what AI can bring to our teaching and learning in this age of highly advanced technology. Like many people, I was worrying about being replaced by artificial intelligence, like Chatgpt. I am quite glad that you mentioned the unique advantages of teachers and made me understand that I am irreplaceable.

    ReplyDelete

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