🦾 I found the best conversation practice for anyone who struggles to get started

I checked with natives - it's legit.

Dear reader,

I just had a 20-minute conversation with AI. In Korean. For free.

I use lots of cutting-edge technology for my job. We have sophisticated Notion databases for task management, automated time-tracking syncing with spreadsheets to help with project planning, and of course, I have an AI personal assistant. I don’t write about it much because I’m drowning in AI-related content at work¹. It seems like the whole web is saturated with ChatGPT videos, tutorials, articles and controversies. But this one is too good to skip.

I struggle with conversations in Korean. I don’t have many opportunities to speak, and when I push myself to chat online, I get overwhelmed. Honorifics are hard to use intuitively, I mix up similar grammar structures, mispronounce syllables and forget words.

I’m confident with my Korean skills, and I’m not scared to talk with strangers. But Korean culture is so different, it’s almost intimidating. What if I said something wrong, or rude? Are we close enough to talk casually? What if I offend them?

Anyway, we all have our reasons for struggling with speaking, you’re not alone. Today, I found a solution that works for me, and can hopefully help you get started as well. Here’s how you can chat directly with AI to practise conversations without offending anyone.

Step 1: Pick your robot

Here are the requirements for your AI to work:

• It has a dictation option in your target language, so you can directly speak into your microphone. You can also work around it by using dictation on your keyboard².

• It speaks back to you in your target language. A decent text-to-speech feature that sounds more natural is a good plus.

• It’s good enough to answer accurately and correct your sentences when needed.

• It’s free. I don’t want to stress myself with another subscription.

I personally like to use my phone for dictation, it feels like sending audio messages. I’m not a fan of Bing in general, their app is pretty terrible, but it ticks all the boxes. It even has GPT-4 for free. I downloaded the app, but you can probably try it in your browser.

Step 2: Start speaking

You don’t need a full length tutorial. Here are a few screenshot to guide you through the confusing interface of the Bing app.

The chat is accessible from the navigation bar. Don’t forget to tick “Use GPT-4” before getting started. Tap the microphone on the bottom right of the screen to start the dictation. Find all of your recent conversations in the menu on the top left.

Formulating good AI prompts takes times, but for conversation practice, a few sentences can be enough. Here is a prompt suggestion to set up your AI (preferably in your target languages) :

Hi. I’m learning Korean and would like to practice conversations with you.
Please correct me if I make mistakes.
I’m using dictation to write, so pronunciation mistakes can turn into different words. Please detect these mistakes and correct them as well.

After these prompts, the AI also decided it would send an English translation of every message it sends. Not indispensable, but I decided to keep it for comfort. As for conversation topics, I just ask random questions I would look up online and follow up with whatever comes to mind.

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Lots of learners use ChatGPT to practise. For example,

Victoria

uses it to generate sample sentences. As AI gets better, we’ll get more and more options to practise our languages. If you try it, let the community know what you think!

Have a lovely week.

Best,

Lou

✍️ Dear language learner

Learn your target language with useful sentences! Here are a few to translate to test yourself. If they’re relevant to you, you can add them to your notes or spaced-repetition system.

🌱 Beginner

I talk to robots.

🌿 Intermediate

I never had a conversation with a native.

🌳 Advanced

I wish I could spend more time practising my pronunciation.

Thank you for reading “I heard from Lou”. It can be hard to find people who share your passion for learning. If you have friends who might like this letter, let them know.

1. In case you’re wondering about my work, we make educational apps. 📚📱

2. Let us know if you need help setting up dictation in your target language.