How to use ChatGPT effectively
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In the not-too-distant future, Attia Youseif, a professor of Arabic language and culture at Indiana University, imagines a world where there are no textbooks in classrooms.
“The printed or traditional textbook should not exist,” says Youseif. “It would be very limiting for students.”
Like many other scientists, Youseif believes that the explosion of publicly available chatbots powered by artificial intelligence (AI) or large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini will change the way people learn and teach.
And when it comes to learning foreign languages, where practicing conversation and understanding cultural complexities are essential, Youseif believes AI will have extremely positive impacts.
“There will be immediate feedback and it will be much more enjoyable for students,” says Youseif. “AI or LLMs will provide many tools that will make getting started much easier.”
Youseif knows that Arabic is not an easy language for English-speaking students. The language uses a different alphabet and has more than 25 different dialects across the 22 Arab states.
That’s why last year he encouraged students to chat for 30 minutes a day with an Arabic-speaking chatbot such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini or Claude.ai.
Whether it’s practicing casual conversations like placing an order at a restaurant, asking an AI bot to write an Arabic song for a friend’s birthday, or asking simple questions about a topic of interest, Youseif says these chatbots allow students to learn their “target language” in a fun and relaxed environment.
“If you do things yourself, with joy, you will learn a lot more and love it,” says Youseif. “It’s not about making demands. It’s about encouraging others. And that makes the difference.”
“Our assessments of students must change”: IU professors believe AI will change the learning landscape
Isak Nti Asare, associate dean of undergraduate studies and student affairs at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies and an expert in AI and cybersecurity, believes LLMs will transform education in the coming years by making rote learning a more passive and accelerated process. He says this will free up time for on-the-ground learning to focus on assessing “human peculiarities” such as creative thinking and problem solving.
“I think it can accelerate some of this, giving us the freedom to tackle the issues a little faster,” said Nti Asare. “I think AI can be a useful tool to improve metacognition in humans, that is, it can help us think about how we think.”
Although AI chatbots in their early stages are prone to occasional “hallucinations” – mixing up information patterns and giving nonsensical or inaccurate answers – Youseif believes that using AI chatbots in class will free up students’ time to practice real-life conversations, which is the most frequent interaction students will have with native human speakers during their LLM studies.
“With this tool, we save time in class,” says Youseif. “This gives students more opportunities to improve their language skills through feedback from their classmates.”
Nti Asare expects that in the coming years, academic assessments will focus less on testing memorization and students will increasingly use AI to solve more complex problems and questions.
“AI, especially large language models, is telling us that we need to change the way we assess students,” says Nti Asare. “This is not a threat to the integrity of education. It is an opportunity for us to rethink our teaching methods and especially our assessment methods.”
In his own classes, Nti Asare encourages LLM students to use chatbots as a tool to solve larger problems, while also asking them to detail the “methodological approach” to using AI.
“I tell my students: Tell me what prompt you entered, what answer you got, how you changed that answer, how you evaluated that answer, and how you used it,” says Nti Asare. “We want students to be familiar with the kinds of tools that are increasingly being used in the workplace.”
“This is how to end conflicts”: Professor believes AI can help train cultural sensitivity
In addition to accelerating memorization, Youseif believes that LLMs have a major advantage in their ability to engage with multiple dialects, contemporary cultural elements and non-verbal communication that may not be fully captured in textbooks.
“If I give you my business card (in the US) and you look at it and put it in your pocket, it’s normal. But if I do that in China or Japan, it’s an insult,” says Youseif.
Youseif says chatbots can incorporate nonverbal communication and cultural cues into their language models, which can help minimize misunderstandings in important cross-cultural interactions between students, such as studying abroad or engaging in foreign policy debate.
“Conflicts are mostly about misunderstandings – misunderstandings about the language you speak or the culture you live in,” Youseif said. “When we have leadership that values the language and culture and treats people with respect, we open channels for mutual understanding and there are fewer conflicts.”
In May, the U.S. Department of Defense cut funding for the majority of universities participating in its Language Flagship Arabic program, leaving IU one of only three universities, along with the University of Arizona and the University of Mississippi, that still maintain the program. Youseif said this makes the work of producing competent, culturally informed Arabic-speaking students more important than ever.
“To be a global leader, you have to be multilingual,” Youseif said. “That’s how to end conflicts; you have to speak correctly, respectfully and with the characteristics of people’s culture.”
Youseif and Nti Asare both stressed that AI will never replace the role of human teachers or conversations, but can be used as an advantage in collaborating with professors to verify and explain information.
“In my opinion, the real promise of AI is to make us more human,” said Nti Asare. “It will give us more time to do the things that only we as humans can do.”
“You can’t replace it with a machine. You need the human,” Youseif said. “But it can help them learn.”
Reach Brian Rosenzweig at [email protected]Follow him on Twitter/X at @brianwritesnews.
