Learning a Foreign Language with AI

Introduction

Learning a foreign language as an adult presents a significant challenge. One of my personal goals was to learn French, a goal inspired primarily by my daughter who has spent six years studying French in school and continues to do so in her professional life. Having spent the last six months learning French, I am eager to share my experiences, including the various challenges I faced, the lessons I learned, and insights into how AI tools facilitated my language learning journey. My hope is that this article will inspire others to embark on their own language learning journeys, armed with helpful tips and a sense of fun.

This article also serves to celebrate the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris (“Jeux Olympiques de Paris 2024”). One of my intermediate learning goals was to watch Olympic news coverage in French. While I’m unsure of how much I’ll understand, I plan to turn on French subtitles on YouTube (a fantastic feature of the platform) and avoid relying on English translations. It promises to be both a fun and challenging experience.

Benefits of Learning a Foreign Language as an Adult

Several studies highlight potential benefits of learning a new language as an adult:

????????? Cognitive Benefits: Learning a new language can enhance memory retention and vocabulary. It can also improve attention span and foster flexible thinking.

????????? Health Benefits: Many studies suggest that learning a second language as an adult could help stave off dementia.

????????? Personal Growth: It enhances communication, empathy, and can potentially foster long-lasting personal relationships across borders. It also stimulates creativity and enhances emotional intelligence.

????????? Professional Advantages: It opens up a wealth of opportunities for career growth and can influence decision-making.

Typical Challenges for Adult Language Learners

Based on these studies, here are several major challenges that I have also experienced to varying degrees over the past few months:

????????? Cognitive Differences: Adult brains develop differently from children’s brains, which are more adept at language acquisition. For example, I initially struggled with memorizing French vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar rules.

????????? Accent and Pronunciation: Adult learners may find it more challenging to attain native-like pronunciation due to the influence of their native language and established speech habits. I encountered significant challenges with French pronunciation (e.g., the famous French ‘R’ sounds) and listening comprehension, which I will detail later in terms of how I remedied some of these challenges with AI.

????????? Time Constraints: Adults often juggle multiple responsibilities, making it more difficult to dedicate consistent time and effort to language learning. One way I addressed this challenge was by allocating learning time slots early in the morning and late at night. It requires discipline and perseverance to stick with the schedule.

????????? Motivational Dips: The commitment of time and resources, cultural hurdles, learning plateaus, emotional strains, impact on native language, cognitive strains, social anxieties, and the sacrifices involved can all lead to motivational dips.

????????? Learning Approach: Adults and children absorb and learn things differently. Factors beyond age, like immersion, make a bigger difference in language learning success.

My Initial Language Learning Plan

Before embarking on my language learning journey, I conducted extensive research and formulated an initial plan. While not everything has worked out as planned, I have more or less adhered to it, with the exception of extensively using AI after making a mid-course correction.

????????? Using a Language Learning App: Duolingo: There are numerous language learning apps available on the market. I chose Duolingo primarily based on my daughter’s recommendation. Duolingo is a popular language learning application for several reasons: it’s well-structured, particularly suitable for beginners; it fosters competition through gamification of the application interface design; it has a large user base for popular languages (for example, there are 24 million French learners) with comprehensive content; it uses AI technology behind the scenes; and most importantly, the app is free if you can tolerate some limitations, with an optional paid tier that removes these limitations.

????????? Watching French Language Learning Content on YouTube: There are numerous YouTube channels dedicated to learning French. One of the main criticisms of Duolingo is its lack of realistic French speaking content and daily conversations. I thought I could improve my speaking ability by watching additional speaking content. However, this did not initially work out as expected.

????????? Reading French Language Books: I initially planned to borrow a series of books from the library to enhance my reading ability. This proved harder than I thought, as I grossly underestimated the basic language skills (e.g., vocabulary, grammar rules) required to even read and understand a simple children’s book in French.

My Language Learning Experience with Duolingo

Here’s a list of interesting features of Duolingo, based on my experience of using it for the last six months:

????????? Bite-Size Learning Lessons: The basic learning component is a series of exercises (‘lessons’ in Duolingo’s terms). A typical lesson consists of 12 to 17 questions that you need to answer. A learning unit consists of about 22-26 lessons with various formats: listening, pronunciation, filling in the blanks in a sentence, translation (i.e., translating between English and French in my case), reading comprehension of a couple of paragraphs or a slightly longer story. The French course I took has a linear learning path, meaning that you have to go through lessons one by one and complete the end-of-unit exam before you can take on the next unit.

? Pros: The “bite-size” learning approach means that you can complete a lesson in about 15 minutes, fitting it into your schedule whenever you have some available time. You can actually exceed the 15-minute limit; however, Duolingo’s app design encourages you to speed up by awarding incentives.

? Cons: I initially thought that I could spread a 15-minute lesson throughout the day. This didn’t work for me since learning a language requires a great deal of repetition and practice. After my initial setback (i.e., I almost gave up since my progress was too slow), I decided to allocate a continuous 1-hour time slot instead. In addition, as a true beginner in French, I found that 15 minutes per lesson is not sufficient. For example, just practicing pronunciation and listening comprehension of new vocabularies or expressions would add significant time.

????????? Emphasizing Repetition and Correcting Mistakes: The learning paths of these lessons are well-structured and connected. New words or grammar patterns are repeated throughout each learning unit. If you make a mistake, you need to correct the mistake by the end of each lesson and will be asked again by the end of the unit.

? Pros: Repetition and practice are two key elements of learning a new language. I remember better the new words or grammar patterns on which I initially made a mistake.

? Cons: If you’re not a beginner, it can become boring if the app asks you the same question too many times.

????????? Gamification: Duolingo uses various techniques to motivate users to continue using the app, including various levels of competitive leagues, streaks, extra points (called ‘xp’ in Duolingo), and many types of awards (such as you can double the extra points if you reach certain conditions).

? Pros: You’re always competing with others in a league and just like a sports league, you can be demoted or promoted to the next level of the league on a weekly basis. Because of the competitive nature, it motivates everyone to improve on a weekly basis.

? Cons: Everyone is trying to get more extra points or awards and might lose sight of the original objective of language learning. I experienced a few pitfalls as I was afraid of being demoted and didn’t spend enough time practicing new words or grammar concepts. By the way, Duolingo’s app allows a user to skip a type of question (for me, it’s typically French pronunciation or listening questions) and these types of questions will appear again in 15 minutes.

????????? Use of AI to Enhance Learning Experience: Based on Duolingo’s blog posts, it uses several AI capabilities to enhance the language learning experience. For example, Duolingo has an AI model called “Birdbrain” extensively for generating personalized exercises based on a user’s strengths and weaknesses. Duolingo recently announced that they have incorporated OpenAI’s GPT4 model for generating lesson content (currently only supporting French and Spanish, the two most popular languages). Even though AI is being used, Duolingo still uses domain experts, for example native speakers or linguistics experts, to validate AI-generated content. It’s a similar knowledge-based approach I’ve advocated in my other AI articles.

? Pros: The app keeps track of your weaknesses and would automatically adjust the lessons based on your progress. This approach provides consistency and continuous improvement for learning throughout the course. For example, I’m sure that pronunciation and listening questions are AI-generated and it’s hard to pass these types of questions without significant efforts. In addition, Duolingo enables the user feedback mechanism in case of wrong answers or missing content.

? Cons: It’s still not 100% perfect for AI-generated content. For example, Duolingo seems to put more weight on correcting mistakes, which might generate similar questions over and over again. Unfortunately, I saw a news article that Duolingo plans to expand the usage of Generative AI and to lay off some of their native language experts, which I’m concerned about the future quality of lessons.

Language Translation with AI Tools: Bing Translator, Google Translator, DeepL Translator

Just over a decade ago, you would need to hire professional translators for language translation tasks, whether text-based, speech-based, or a combination of both. It was typically expensive and challenging to find good translators for real-time language translation. Today, language translating tools are a must-have for language learners. The progress of these AI tools, which are capable of achieving results similar to traditional translators, is impressive.

As mentioned, I had a hard time in the first couple of months learning French using the Duolingo app. I particularly had major challenges with French pronunciation and listening comprehension exercises, to the degree that I tried to avoid them if possible.

One of the unique features of Duolingo is that it repeats exercises you have failed, over and over again until you successfully pass them. In other words, I had no way to escape those pronunciation exercises. I decided to conduct some form of self-assessment and analysis. Here’s a list of a couple of my course correction measures:

????????? Using Microsoft OneNote to write down my mistakes (and corresponding correct answers), new words/phrases, and key grammar concepts. Reviewing my previous mistakes every day before I take the next set of lessons. This measure alone cut down my error rate by more than half.

????????? Taking extra effort to focus on French pronunciation and listening comprehension. I decided to extensively use both Bing Translator and Google Translator to validate and also to practice French pronunciation. I also use another translator – DeepL to validate my translations. I also practice pronouncing every word, phrase, and sentence, multiple times regardless of types of exercises.

Based on my experience and with help from Bing Copilot, I’ve compiled a list of strengths, weaknesses, and AI capabilities of these three AI language translators:

Bing Translator

????????? Strengths: It is one of the most affordable options on the market. Bing Translator also comes with a free tier. The interface is user-friendly. It provides both pronunciation and listening capabilities for French, which I have used extensively. Most recently, it introduced a unique feature called Tone, which can provide a casual tone (i.e., informal and close to daily conversations) and a formal tone.

????????? Weaknesses: Bing Translator lacks support for the number of languages that other services provide. It also has a smaller size limitation compared to other services.

????????? AI Capabilities: Bing Translator is a statistical machine translator which offers partial neural machine translation. It uses a proprietary algorithm with convolutional neural networks (CNNs) that have been trained with the Linguee database.

Google Translator

????????? Strengths: Google Translate supports a vast array of languages. It provides quick and on-the-fly translations. Google Translate is available both as a web application and a mobile app. Similar to Bing Translator, its speech-to-text and pronunciation capabilities are good. It also includes a conversation mode, enabling users to have real-time translated conversations by speaking into the device.

????????? Weaknesses: Google Translate may not always provide accurate translations, especially for complex or idiomatic language expressions. It doesn’t always comprehend context, leading to potential misinterpretations. To be fair, Bing Translator is roughly at the same level and would make similar mistakes as Google’s – even though it’s a fairly small percentage based on my experience.

????????? AI Capabilities: Google Translate utilizes cutting-edge machine learning and neural networks to decipher and translate text. It continuously learns from vast amounts of multilingual content available on the internet, improving its accuracy over time.

DeepL Translator

????????? Strengths: DeepL is renowned for its ability to produce translations of exceptional quality. I particularly like the feature of providing multiple alternative translations. It supports a wide range of languages. DeepL offers a simple and intuitive interface.

????????? Weaknesses: While DeepL offers a free version, it comes with limitations on the number of characters that can be translated. Users requiring extensive translation may need to subscribe to a paid plan.

????????? AI Capabilities: DeepL uses deep learning technology to provide quick and accurate translations. Its proprietary neural machine translation (NMT) system is capable of processing large amounts of data.

Using Generative AI Models for Language Learners

Generative AI models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Google’s Bard, can provide powerful features for language learners. I have just started using some of these features recently and only used them for more complex and long text content’s translations. I can envision that in the not too distant future, these AI models can match (or even exceed) traditional human translators as well as those AI language translators mentioned above.

With help from Bing Copilot, here’s a brief summary of how generative AI models like GPT-4o and Google Bard can assist language learners:

GPT-4o (OpenAI)?

????????? Multimodal Inputs and Outputs: GPT-4o can accept any combination of text, audio, image, and video inputs and generate any combination of text, audio, and image outputs.

????????? Fast Response Time: It can respond to audio inputs in as little as 232 milliseconds, with an average of 320 milliseconds.

????????? Improved Non-English Language Support: GPT-4o matches GPT-4 Turbo performance on text in English, with significant improvement on text in non-English languages.

????????? Better Vision and Audio Understanding: GPT-4o is especially better at vision and audio understanding compared to existing models.

????????? Language Learning: GPT-4o’s support for 50 languages and its ability to recognize and correct pronunciation can make it an effective tool for language learners.

Google Bard

? Personalized Learning: Bard can tailor its teaching approach to individual needs and preferences.

? Immersive Language Practice: Bard can engage in real-time conversations, allowing learners to practice speaking and understanding the target language in a natural and authentic setting.

? Cultural Context: Bard can provide insights into the culture associated with the target language, helping learners gain a deeper understanding of the language’s nuances and expressions.

? Accessibility: Bard is accessible on any device with an internet connection.

Conclusion?

My six-month French learning journey has been quite a challenge. I did make some course corrections early on to address these challenges – mostly using AI tools to help improve my language learning experience. I use the Duolingo language learning app primarily for taking daily French lessons. Duolingo has many great features; however, I’ve listed some of the pros and cons with these features. I also complement daily usage of Duolingo with additional French language videos and/or audio on YouTube.

Language Translators are a must-have for language learners. I summarized my experience using three translators: Bing’s, Google’s and DeepL, including their strengths, weaknesses, and AI capabilities. Using language translators to validate my pronunciation, listening and translations is one of the key factors for improving my French learning experience significantly.

Lastly, I outlined some of the new features of generative AI models like GPT-4o and Google Bard. These language learning features make powerful tools for language learners, providing interactive, personalized, and immersive learning experiences. They can be particularly useful for adult learners or those learning a language after retirement, as they offer flexible and personalized learning experiences.

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