#AI for ESL

[richardtheteacher]

Discover how generative AI like ChatGPT is transforming the classroom. Learn practical ways teachers can use AI to plan lessons, differentiate instruction, give feedback, and boost student outcomes—all while saving time and energy.

[beemovieerotica]

Hey... so there now appear to be AI-generated science articles on .org websites that are giving biologically incorrect "facts" on basic, for-children topics

The title is "Are There Freshwater Octopus Species?" which should be an incredibly straightforward thing to answer: No.

The article starts out decent:

"Despite their many fascinating features, there is no evidence to suggest that octopuses can survive in freshwater environments."

Cool. Okay. Next section.

"While most people associate octopuses with the ocean, there are some species that can survive in freshwater environments."

Wait. What?

"Freshwater octopuses belong to the genus Amphioctopus, which includes several species that are found in brackish water and estuaries. These cephalopods have adapted to life in freshwater environments and have been observed in rivers, streams, and even hydrothermal vents."

NO NO NO.

One species of freshwater octopus is Amphioctopus aegina...Another species, Amphioctopus marginatus...

THESE GUYS LIVE IN THE OCEAN. [Scrolls 2 more sections]

Freshwater octopuses are still a topic of debate among scientists. While some researchers claim that they do exist, others argue that there is not enough literature to support their existence.

asd;lkfjasdlf;kjasd;flksjdfa

[adhdo5]

AI image generation is so fucking tacky and annoying and unhelpful as if looking up reference images wasn't already enough of a pain here's a bunch of ugly slop that is a statistical approximation of what you're trying to get an image of looks like because that's apparently easier than extant images of the extensively photo documented thing you want to look at. CAN YOU KILL YOURSELF

[hislittleraincloud]

Ah, so it's legitimate suckery and not just any bias I may have

"Crackstone Crypt". Huh. I guess they just really needed an editor. *forgives*

✨four short paragraphs later✨

Oh. Not an editor. Needs a whole ass English lesson.

ETA: It persists throughout. This author legit forced "Crackstone Crypt", not "Crackstone's crypt":

and that provides for some awkward af reading. It's bad writing over a misconstruction:

What is wrong with them? 🤦🏽‍♂️

[lenectarine]

How do you manage to say the shittiest AND the most idiotic fucking thing at once? Do you think this man realizes how patronizing he sounds?

[vvelegrin]

incredible how people kneejerk so hard past a potentially valid point into being jerks about the idea of there being disabled people with different needs

[portable-document-format]

the neocities ai hates tmbg and doesnt know who kyle drake is . 0/10

[andythecarpathian]

Yeah, I had an adult English student recently who did her homework on ChatGPT. I asked her why if her goal was to improve her English--after all, it wasn't like I was going to call her parents and tell them her grade.

I mean, whatever, I graded it, but it didn't help anyone and it wasted all of our time. I think as teachers, it's a good opportunity to really dig in and think about what we're asking our students to do as learning strategies, knowing that these shortcuts now exist. Obviously this goes triple for school children as opposed to adults.

"what did students do before chatgpt?" well one time i forgot i had a history essay due at my 10am class the morning of so over the course of my 30 minute bus ride to school i awkwardly used by backpack as a desk, sped wrote the essay, and got an A on it.

six months later i re-read the essay prior to the final exam, went 'ohhhh yeah i remember this', got a question on that topic, and aced it.

point being that actually doing the work is how you learn the material and internalize it. ChatGPT can give you a short cut but it won't build you the the muscles.

[en-qq]

the plot isn't similar at all and i feel like fuji momo polished her drawing style a lot so you can't even necessarily tell by that, but i feel like you still very easily see both, koiwazurai no elli and hikaeme ni ittemo kore wa ai are written by her lol

[red-fox-education]

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Grammar corrections

It’s like having an AI speaking coach anytime you want.

👉 Try it out here: https://redfoxeducation.com/speech-buddy-topics

[jadeharleyinc]

"i am the strawman you just made up, OP! i'm even worse than you think, let me double down!"

"this is DEFINITELY written by AI, I can tell because it uses the writing quirks that AI uses (because it was trained on real people who write with those quirks)"

c'mon dudes we have got to do better than this

[ruhua-langblr]

Duolingo Sucks, Now What?: A Guide

Now that the quality of Duolingo has fallen (even more) due to AI and people are more willing to make the jump here are just some alternative apps and what languages they have:

"I just want an identical experience to DL"

Busuu (Languages: Spanish, Japanese, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean)

"I want a good audio-based app"

Language Transfer (Languages: French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish Speakers)

"I want a good audio-based app and money's no object"

Pimsleur (Literally so many languages)

Glossika (Also a lot of languages, but minority languages are free)

*anecdote: I borrowed my brother's Japanese Pimsleur CD as a kid and I still remember how to say the weather is nice over a decade later. You can find the CDs at libraries and "other" places I'm sure.

"I have a pretty neat library card"

Mango (Languages: So many and the endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

Transparent Language: (Languages: THE MOST! Also the one that has the widest variety of African languages! Perhaps the most diverse in ESL and learning a foreign language not in English)

"I want SRS flashcards and have an android"

AnkiDroid: (Theoretically all languages, pre-made decks can be found easily)

"I want SRS flashcards and I have an iphone"

AnkiApp: It's almost as good as AnkiDroid and free compared to the official Anki app for iphone

"I don't mind ads and just want to learn Korean"

lingory

"I want an app made for Mandarin that's BETTER than DL and has multiple languages to learn Mandarin in"

ChineseSkill (You can use their older version of the course for free)

"I don't like any of these apps you mentioned already, give me one more"

Bunpo: (Languages: Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Mandarin)

[visenyaism]

do you have any ideas about why so many students are struggling with literacy now? I know that illiteracy and reading comprehension have been issues for years and most americans read at like a 5th grade reading level but I’m curious why it seems to be worse now (pandemic? no child left behind?)

It is everything. There’s not one answer. I could talk about this forever so instead I set a five minute timer on my phone and wrote a list of as many of the many things that are causing this on a systemic level that I could think of:

It’s parents not reading with their kids (a privilege, but some parents have that privilege to be able to do this and don’t.)

It’s youtube from birth and never being bored.

It’s phasing out phonics for sight words (memorizing without understanding sounds or meaning) in elementary schools in the early aughts.

It’s defunding public libraries that do all the community and youth outreach.

It’s NCLB and mandating standardized tests which center reading short passages as opposed to longform texts so students don’t build up the endurance or comprehension skills.

It’s NCLB preventing schools from holding students back if they lack the literacy skills to move onto the next grade because they can’t be left behind so they’re passed on.

It’s the chronic underfunding of ESL and Special Ed programs for students who need extra literacy support.

It’s the cultural devaluing of the humanities in favor of stem and business because those make more money which leads to a lot of students to completely disregard reading and writing.

It’s the learning loss from covid.

It’s covid trauma manifesting in a lot of students as learned helplessness, or an inability to “figure things out” or push through adversity to complete challenging tasks independently, especially reading difficult texts.

It’s covid normalizing cheating and copying.

It’s increasing phone use.

It’s damage to attention span exacerbated by increased phone use that leaves you without an ability to sit and be bored ever without 2-3 forms of constant stimulation.

It’s shortform video becoming the predominant form of social media content as opposed to anything text-based.

It’s starting to also be generative AI.

It’s the book bans.

what did I miss.

[scienceinenglish]

Finding the gold test stone

Live editors can find the gold test stone. Right now, LLM AI can’t. Much of my time as a scientific editor and proofreader has focused on authors who speak English as a subsequent language.* Given that the people who hire proofreaders are usually the ones who need them, I often find myself looking at a strange or colorful turn of phrase that needs something closer to translation. I was working for GenScript as a W2 employee and I didn't mind occasionally helping out other parties when my boss handed me their copy. At the bottom of one page, the text assured the reader that this technique was the gold test stone in the industry. "Gold test stone"? What's "gold test stone," I wondered. There were plenty of plausible explanations. It could have been industry jargon. My boss and many of his friends were Chinese. What if it was a Mandarin idiom, and what would be the best way to modify it for an English-speaking audience? The right answer came to me at once. Gold standard. The drafter had been trying to say "gold standard." Mentally, I experienced it as a leap, like the one Barbara McClintock described when she first visualized the jumper gene. My connection may not have been Nobel-worthy, but I've had to do it over and over, and it's become a skill. My fellow editors, please comment with your own gold test stone. When did you have to intuit the client's meaning, and how did you confirm that you were right? *I don't want to say "English as a second language" because sometimes it is third or fourth.

[xxscarletxrosexx]

I'm an ESL/EFL teacher. I work with adult students who have asked for my opinion on using any form of AI for writing and enhancing writing. ChatGPT can be used as a tool for improving fluency in speaking and writing, but I highly discourage using it as a main source. Dependency on things other than yourself will bite you in the ass long-term. I always have my students practice writing with paper and pencil in class, so I have an authentic form of their writing. I can find out easily which students use ChatGPT on type-written short essays/short responses.

ur future nurse is using chapgpt to glide thru school u better take care of urself

[txttletale]

obligatory disclaimer that neurotically and mechanistically applying heuristics for 'detecting AI writing' to everything will make you insane and lead you to be unpleasant to random people who happen to talk oddly becaues they are autistic or ESL or just talk like that -- but for me a real red flag for something being chatgptese isnt anything about punctuation or vocabulary but the constant repetitive use of dogshit similies