I continue to progress through Duolingo Dutch. At the current rate I should reach the end of the course in a month or so. In the meantime I've been looking at other ways of supplementing that learning. Since one thing that Duo isn't very good for is speaking, but I don't yet feel nearly good enough to try conversation exchange with a stranger, I tried a brief Zoom chat with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
leonato which was really rather hard work, but we managed to keep at it for about 15 minutes, which is a lot better than nothing.
On the listening side I was pleasantly surprised by how much I understood, and think that that might actually be a benefit of speaking with someone who, whilst having a good command of the language, is not a native speaker themselves. On the productive side however I was very conscious that the combination of working out what I wanted to say, searching for vocabulary, trying to remember how the grammar works, getting the pronunciation right, and doing all that in real time was an awful lot of cognitive load, and that I might find it a bit easier to progress if I got more practice at the productive vocab and grammar without the time pressure. I considered asking Mark to do some text chatting with me, but was aware that I'm still very limited by my vocabulary and that it might be a bit dull for him. And then I remembered that ChatGPT exists, and for all its limitations, this does appear to be a really good use case for it.
So I've been chatting to ChatGPT in Dutch, asking it to correct my grammar as I go, and I'm incredibly impressed so far. It's also been able to give really clear explanations of why it's made the corrections it has. As well as just chatting, I've tried asking it for short writing prompts, and also asked it to write short articles and stories aimed at someone with about CEFR level A2 for reading practice, both of which also seem to be pretty effective approaches. I haven't quite got the hang of getting it to remember to correct my grammar every time - it usually seems to manage half a dozen exchanges before I need to remind it, but that's only mildly annoying. I've not really interacted with it previously, and I suspect that with a bit more experience I'll find it easier to get exactly what I want out of it, but right from the start it feels incredibly powerful.
leonato which was really rather hard work, but we managed to keep at it for about 15 minutes, which is a lot better than nothing. On the listening side I was pleasantly surprised by how much I understood, and think that that might actually be a benefit of speaking with someone who, whilst having a good command of the language, is not a native speaker themselves. On the productive side however I was very conscious that the combination of working out what I wanted to say, searching for vocabulary, trying to remember how the grammar works, getting the pronunciation right, and doing all that in real time was an awful lot of cognitive load, and that I might find it a bit easier to progress if I got more practice at the productive vocab and grammar without the time pressure. I considered asking Mark to do some text chatting with me, but was aware that I'm still very limited by my vocabulary and that it might be a bit dull for him. And then I remembered that ChatGPT exists, and for all its limitations, this does appear to be a really good use case for it.
So I've been chatting to ChatGPT in Dutch, asking it to correct my grammar as I go, and I'm incredibly impressed so far. It's also been able to give really clear explanations of why it's made the corrections it has. As well as just chatting, I've tried asking it for short writing prompts, and also asked it to write short articles and stories aimed at someone with about CEFR level A2 for reading practice, both of which also seem to be pretty effective approaches. I haven't quite got the hang of getting it to remember to correct my grammar every time - it usually seems to manage half a dozen exchanges before I need to remind it, but that's only mildly annoying. I've not really interacted with it previously, and I suspect that with a bit more experience I'll find it easier to get exactly what I want out of it, but right from the start it feels incredibly powerful.
