I asked AI How to Learn a Language Quickly

These days, people are using AI tools like ChatGPT for almost everything, including educational advice. I asked ChatGPT how to learn a language quickly. Let's see if its language advice is useful and how to make it better.

As a professional English teacher and language learning expert, I'm going to look at ChatGPT's response and give my opinions. In order to prevent any bias, I used a brand new ChatGPT account with no history of prior conversations about language learning. I wanted to get a similar response to someone who the same question if they didn't know anything about language learning strategies.

Let's review ChatGPT's answer.

1. Immerse Yourself Daily

ChatGPT says, "The fastest way to learn a language is by surrounding yourself with it daily". It goes on to explain that immersion causes rapid brain adaptations by mimicking the way we learned our first language. Watch TV shows, and listen to music, podcasts, and radio in the target language. Change the language on your phone and apps that you already use. Consistent exposure will help your brain get comfortable with the sentence structure, pronunciation, and vocabulary. Passive listening builds familiarity, while active listening (trying to translate or write down what you hear) builds real skill.

Overall Review

I'm shocked that it talked about immersion first! This is great advice. With the popularity of language learning apps like Duolingo, Babbel, and others that focus on games and/or grammar, I didn't expect ChatGPT to understand the importance of immersion. Most people don't!

In the explanation, the AI did a great job of giving recommendations for different immersion methods. It gave a visual example, TV shows, but I'm a little surprised it didn't talk about YouTube. Music and podcasts are great for audio immersion, though I would say podcasts are 10x better than music for this purpose.

What Could Be Better and What is Just Wrong

First, a lot of people talk about the importance of changing your phone's settings to English or whichever language you're learning. It doesn't hurt, but I think that people overestimate how much reading of their phone's text they actually do. I'm not talking about the content read on your phone. You probably read a lot of different blogs, social media posts, etc. But what about the text for your phone's operating system?

On my phone's lock screen, there are only three words: "May", and "Wi-Fi Calling". Unlocking my phone, I see a couple of words related to today's weather, and...that's pretty much it. Changing your phone to another language just doesn't provide enough reading practice to be very useful. It's not a bad idea, but it isn't going to accelerate your language learning very much either.

Second, the last sentence of ChatGPT's response is meaningless. Passive and Active Listening describe two ways of consuming your immersion content. I prefer the terms Relaxed or Study Listening because I think they are better terms for explaining the different activities. Passive Listening (Relaxed Listening) is when you watch or listen to something and simply try to keep up. You try your best to understand, but you don't pause to look things up. Active Listening (Study Listening) is when you pause the content to translate unknown words.

ChatGPT said Relaxed Listening builds familiarity while Study Listening builds real skill. This makes no sense at all. They both build the skill of Listening, they both build your vocabulary (in different ways), and they both increase your familiarity with the language.

Pausing to translate during Study Listening has its tradeoffs.

For beginners, if you pause at every new word, you're going to spend most of your study time with the immersion content paused. It's a poor use of your time, you need content to flow into your brain as much as possible, so pausing the content slows down this process. As a more advanced learner, Study Listening is more useful because you'll already understand most of what you're hearing.

2. Focus on High-Frequency Words

ChatGPT says, "Around 1,000 or 2,000 words make up 80-90% of daily conversations". By focusing on learning those words, you improve your conversation abilities quickly. Learn how to introduce yourself, ask for directions, order food, express needs and emotions, and describe your day. Apps like Anki or Memrise use spaced repetition to help you retain these words efficiently.

Overall Review

The need to focus on high-frequency words is a common myth in language learning. It makes sense to beginners. The verb "run" is more common and useful than the word "hot-foot" or "scamper". So of course, you'd want to learn "run" before those other words. But when we think about this idea a little more, we notice a couple of problems.

I do like that it talked about using apps like Anki. Anki is an excellent tool for improving vocabulary efficiently.

What Could Be Better and What is Just Wrong

ChatGPT is right—a small number of words are used in many, many conversations. But you don't actually need to focus on learning them. Here's why:

1. As a language learner, when you're immersing and you hear the sentence "He hot-footed it out of the police station" or "He scampered back home", you don't know that those verbs are uncommon. All you know is that you've never heard them! Should you know them? Using an English-to-English dictionary can be somewhat helpful. The word, "run", shows A1 on the Oxford Learner's Dictionary, which tells us that it's a common word. However, nothing is shown on the pages for "hot-foot" or "scamper". Sometimes you just won't know if a word is useful to learn or not.
2. Common words are...common! Yes, ideally, you should learn common words before rare ones, but that will happen automatically because they'll appear in your immersion content frequently. They don't require extra focus to learn because your content will show you the important words—the common words—more often because they're common.

Because of these points, I recommend only writing down words that you hear twice or more. If you hear a word that sounds familiar because you've heard it before, but you don't know the definition, write that word down. It's probably important (because it's common), and you should know it.

Then, when you're done with immersion, create Anki cards from the list of words you wrote down. This is the best way to improve your vocabulary.

3. Speak from Day One

According to ChatGPT, you should start speaking early, even just basic words or phrases. Many learners delay speaking until they feel "ready", but that slows them down. You need to make mistakes to correct those mistakes and then build confidence. Use language exchange platforms like HelloTalk or Tandem, join conversation groups, or practice with tutors.

Overall Review

This is something that I completely disagree with. Mistakes need to be made in order to improve, but not everyone wants to speak. If speaking English is important to you (and it might not be!), then yes, you do need to speak English someday. But "someday" does not need to be Day One.

What Could Be Better and What is Just Wrong

I don't believe that it's important for anyone to speak on Day 1. Some people don't need to speak at all, and those who do need to speak can wait until Day 1000 if they want to. People learn languages for different reasons, some of which have nothing to do with speaking.

Everyone learned their first language by listening, not by speaking. Speaking is a byproduct (an additional benefit) that comes from learning to listen well. Listening gets us 80% of the way toward fluent speaking, and the last 20% comes from actually speaking. Listen a lot, and then focus on speaking later, if that's important to you.

Fun is the most important thing when it comes to learning a language. If you hate speaking in a foreign language or if you are terrified of making mistakes, then don't do it yet! The last thing I'd want is for someone to force themselves to do this, get embarrassed, and then quit the language entirely.

However, some people want to speak early! That's fine too. I think it's fun to speak other languages and to start practicing my accent, so I like to say words out loud to myself, but it's not a requirement.

You don't have to speak on Day One. No law of the universe says, "If you don't start speaking by Day 7, you've already failed", that's ridiculous. You can speak when you want to speak.

As for HelloTalk/Tandem, conversation groups, and tutors, none of these things are required either—least of all, tutors. Use them if you enjoy them, otherwise, you can skip them and find other outputting methods that are enjoyable for you.

4. Think in the Target Language

ChatGPT says you need to train your brain to process thoughts in your target language. Translating in your head creates a lag in conversation. By thinking in the target language, you become comfortable using its sentence structure and vocabulary. Start with simple things like labeling items in your house or describing your actions ("I'm brushing my teeth" / "Je me brosse les dents").

Overall Review

I think this is good advice and it's something that I should have done more when I was learning French. If you don't want to or can't communicate with native speakers, thinking in the target language is a good way to get some Output practice.

If I translate "Je me brosse les dents" literally in English, it would be something like "I brush myself the teeth". As an American, I would never use that sentence in English, it sounds funny to express that thought with those words. But if I were to directly translate each English word into French, the sentence would sound weird to French people.

By thinking in the target language, you get some practice using the language the way that language was intended to be used, rather than using your own language with words translated into English.

What Could Be Better and What is Just Wrong

There's nothing wrong with the AI's advice here, but I think thinking in the target language is probably the least useful method of Outputting.

Speaking to a native friend is the best practice; someone who is kind but will correct your mistakes. Speaking to a tutor can be helpful, but expensive and impersonal. If you have no one else to practice with, you'll get a better bang for your buck (better reward for your efforts) by journaling and by recording yourself speaking.

With thinking, there's no feedback. It's hard to correct your mistakes because the thought came and went. And you can't look back a month later to see how your thinking has improved.

Sometimes you're driving or in the shower and you have nothing but your thoughts. In those cases, speaking your thoughts out loud is better than just thinking. That way, you can give your tongue some practice too.

5. Get a Language Partner or Tutor

Engaging with a fluent speaker accelerates your learning dramatically. A language partner or tutor can correct your mistakes, introduce natural phrasing (like "Je me brosse les dents"), and help you practice conversation. They also offer cultural insights that deepen your understanding of the language's nuances. Services like iTalki or Preply connect you with native speakers for regular practice sessions.

Overall Review

Here's a common problem for language learners: You often don't get as much practice as you expect from real-world situations.

You might move to America and use less English than when you were studying in your home country. For example, consider my side of this conversation that I had in multiple French bakeries. I'll translate it into English:

Hello.

One croissant please.

By card. (In response to "How would you like to pay?")

Thank you.

Goodbye.

That was the whole conversation on my side. Did this improve my French? Probably not, I only used 9 words (11 in French). And that was sometimes the only French-speaking that I did for a whole day! In situations where you need to get more Output practice, a tutor or language partner can be helpful.

What Could Be Better and What is Just Wrong

Tutors and Language Partners aren't essential to learning a language. You can absolutely become fluent in a language without these people.

Tutors are expensive and, on their own, they don't provide the quantity of practice needed to become fluent. A 30-minute session once a week is not enough. Even 30 minutes every day would be too little if you are using tutors as your only form of studying.

Language Partners are friends who natively speak the language that you're trying to learn. They can provide corrections like a tutor, but they don't cost any money, which is great. However, there are some drawbacks to relying on a friend to teach you a language:

1. Oftentimes, your language partner is better at your language than you are at theirs. For example, when I started using HelloTalk, my French was poor, but my French friends were pretty good at English. Because of that, we spoke in English. That didn't help to improve my French though.
2. If you make a friend from another country, they usually want to learn your language just as much as you want to learn theirs. You can take turns. One day can be an English day, and the next day can be in your native language. That way, both people get the chance to practice. The downside is that half the time is wasted time speaking in your own language instead of learning theirs.
3. Most friends aren't very good teachers, especially for their own language. It's difficult to explain language concepts and they've been using their language for their entire life. They often don't know why they say certain things, it just feels natural to them. They developed that natural feeling by immersing, and you should too.

I would view the use of tutors and language partners as supplementary or Boosters to your other study activities.