3 ms·

I'm ambivalent on LLMs, but I have found one really good use for it: helping me with language learning. I'm now at a level (C1) with my second language that it'

I'm ambivalent on LLMs, but I have found one really good use for it: helping me with language learning. I'm now at a level (C1) with my second language that it's really difficult to find resources or even tutors to help refine it. So what I've been doing is chatting with Claude and asking it to correct whatever faults I make or asking it to give me exercises on things where I need to focus. For example, "Give me some exercises where I need to conjugate the past tense and choose the correct form." It's like a personal language learning treadmill.

Miraste 3y ago
I'm surprised languages aren't more of a focus in the LLM hype. They're like if Rosetta Stone ads were true. They translate at state of the art levels, but you can also give and ask for context, and they're trained on native resources and culture. There hasn't been a jump in machine translation this big and fast, ever.
- tkgally 3y ago
  I’m not sure if it reaches the level of hype, but in at least one country where English is not the dominant language—Japan, where I live—using LLMs for language learning is frequently mentioned in the press and elsewhere. Some educators are starting to use them in classes, too: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20230824/p2a/00m/0na/029000c https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20230824/p2a/00m/0na/02...
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    Pretty much all the major LLMs are trained on 99% English text, so it's good for people who want to learn English, not so good the other way around.
- hereforcomments 3y ago
  I agree, they are perfect for language learning. Reusing another project I put together a site as a weekend project mainly for myself to learn Dutch but decided to release it publicly for free (invite only) to see how others interact with it as it's almost free to run it and looks good in my portfolio. It's an audio chat app, it's not my idea, I've seen many of these but wanted to create one for my own needs. It uses Chrome's speech to text API (webspeechapi) for input, then it sends it to ChatGPT 3.5 and I use Google's text to speech API to generate audio response along with the text. So practically I can talk to ChatGPT. I also want to add a dictionary module where I can generate and add example sentences and images to a words and phrases. I'm sure there are complete teams working on apps like this as it's such a straightforward use case. You can try it, it's all Hungarian but you can translate the page. https://convo.hu/ https://convo.hu/ Invite code: CONVO
- nmfisher 3y ago
  I'm applying this to Mandarin (link in profile), and while there might not be much publicity/hype, there's definitely been an avalanche of people doing the same thing. Current problems to solve: - even the "best" LLM (GPT-4) frequently generates explanations/grammar that are plain wrong. Even its "correct" output isn't quite native (not as bad as round-tripping a sentence through Google Translate, but it's just slightly off). - LLMs from Chinese companies (Qwen/Baichuan/etc) are immensely better at producing natural Mandarin (but fall short in other respects, which is unsurprising because they're smaller). I haven't tried fine-tuning LLaMa-2 yet, but I've had good success fine-tuning Qwen. - in my opinion, 90% of the market doesn't need open-ended conversation about random topics. They need structured content with a gradual progression and regular review. You can use LLMs to generate this (which is what I'm doing), but it's not like a random newbie student is going to be able to design this themselves. Not saying any of these problems aren't solvable, just pointing out the work that still needs to be done. For me, the most exciting prospect is automated grammar correction during spoken conversation. I've made things harder for myself because I wanted to keep everything on-device so users could be assured that if they purchase something, they'll have access to it forever[0]. The downside is that I can't (yet) practically deploy any of these cutting-edge LLMs at the edge so I'm kind of handicapped in what I can do. [0] subject to iOS/Android forced upgrades, which I have no control over. It's all cross-platform though, so I'll make a macOS/Linux/Windows version available at some point.
- famouswaffles 3y ago
  >They translate at state of the art levels They are actually much better than previous state of the art. For the couple dozen languages with enough representation in the training set, GPT-4 is by far the best translator you can get your hands on, even without the whole "ask for context" etc
isaacremuant 3y ago
Just remember, that you have no guarantees that it will be correct. Use a combination of external sources to cross verify. Also spoken form generation is very important if you plan to interact with people. Combining it with real conversation will definitely help. But I can see how it can be absolutely awesome to play around, as an extra tool.
Vinnl 3y ago
Yeah, this Show HN convinced me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36973400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36973400 Unfortunately it's no longer free to try, but it worked well.
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
  i'm using it, it works fine for what it is
PeterisP 3y ago
Underresourced languages also are underresourced in terms of training data for LLMs, and so for smaller languages LLMs do have significantly more problems with sometimes generating something that's completely weird and wrong not only in terms of facts but also in terms of language, word choice or grammar.
- dustincoates 3y ago
  > smaller languages LLMs do have significantly more problems Yeah, I would never try this with, for example, Chichewa or Icelandic. Which is both understandable (like you said, less training data) and a shame, because there aren't many good resources for language learners now.
Tepix 3y ago
I've tried to get ChatGPT to correct my french whenever i make (small) mistakes, but it never worked. Is Claude better in that regard? Ideally i want the LLM to correct every single mistake i make and provide an explanation.
- dustincoates 3y ago
  Claude is much better. I could never get ChatGPT to reliably correct my mistakes, even when I slipped in egregious ones.

Miraste 3y ago

I'm surprised languages aren't more of a focus in the LLM hype. They're like if Rosetta Stone ads were true. They translate at state of the art levels, but you can also give and ask for context, and they're trained on native resources and culture. There hasn't been a jump in machine translation this big and fast, ever.

tkgally 3y ago
I’m not sure if it reaches the level of hype, but in at least one country where English is not the dominant language—Japan, where I live—using LLMs for language learning is frequently mentioned in the press and elsewhere. Some educators are starting to use them in classes, too: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20230824/p2a/00m/0na/029000c https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20230824/p2a/00m/0na/02...
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  Pretty much all the major LLMs are trained on 99% English text, so it's good for people who want to learn English, not so good the other way around.
hereforcomments 3y ago
I agree, they are perfect for language learning. Reusing another project I put together a site as a weekend project mainly for myself to learn Dutch but decided to release it publicly for free (invite only) to see how others interact with it as it's almost free to run it and looks good in my portfolio. It's an audio chat app, it's not my idea, I've seen many of these but wanted to create one for my own needs. It uses Chrome's speech to text API (webspeechapi) for input, then it sends it to ChatGPT 3.5 and I use Google's text to speech API to generate audio response along with the text. So practically I can talk to ChatGPT. I also want to add a dictionary module where I can generate and add example sentences and images to a words and phrases. I'm sure there are complete teams working on apps like this as it's such a straightforward use case. You can try it, it's all Hungarian but you can translate the page. https://convo.hu/ https://convo.hu/ Invite code: CONVO
nmfisher 3y ago
I'm applying this to Mandarin (link in profile), and while there might not be much publicity/hype, there's definitely been an avalanche of people doing the same thing. Current problems to solve: - even the "best" LLM (GPT-4) frequently generates explanations/grammar that are plain wrong. Even its "correct" output isn't quite native (not as bad as round-tripping a sentence through Google Translate, but it's just slightly off). - LLMs from Chinese companies (Qwen/Baichuan/etc) are immensely better at producing natural Mandarin (but fall short in other respects, which is unsurprising because they're smaller). I haven't tried fine-tuning LLaMa-2 yet, but I've had good success fine-tuning Qwen. - in my opinion, 90% of the market doesn't need open-ended conversation about random topics. They need structured content with a gradual progression and regular review. You can use LLMs to generate this (which is what I'm doing), but it's not like a random newbie student is going to be able to design this themselves. Not saying any of these problems aren't solvable, just pointing out the work that still needs to be done. For me, the most exciting prospect is automated grammar correction during spoken conversation. I've made things harder for myself because I wanted to keep everything on-device so users could be assured that if they purchase something, they'll have access to it forever[0]. The downside is that I can't (yet) practically deploy any of these cutting-edge LLMs at the edge so I'm kind of handicapped in what I can do. [0] subject to iOS/Android forced upgrades, which I have no control over. It's all cross-platform though, so I'll make a macOS/Linux/Windows version available at some point.
famouswaffles 3y ago
>They translate at state of the art levels They are actually much better than previous state of the art. For the couple dozen languages with enough representation in the training set, GPT-4 is by far the best translator you can get your hands on, even without the whole "ask for context" etc

isaacremuant 3y ago

Just remember, that you have no guarantees that it will be correct. Use a combination of external sources to cross verify. Also spoken form generation is very important if you plan to interact with people. Combining it with real conversation will definitely help. But I can see how it can be absolutely awesome to play around, as an extra tool.

Vinnl 3y ago

Yeah, this Show HN convinced me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36973400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36973400 Unfortunately it's no longer free to try, but it worked well.

IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
i'm using it, it works fine for what it is

PeterisP 3y ago

Underresourced languages also are underresourced in terms of training data for LLMs, and so for smaller languages LLMs do have significantly more problems with sometimes generating something that's completely weird and wrong not only in terms of facts but also in terms of language, word choice or grammar.

dustincoates 3y ago
> smaller languages LLMs do have significantly more problems Yeah, I would never try this with, for example, Chichewa or Icelandic. Which is both understandable (like you said, less training data) and a shame, because there aren't many good resources for language learners now.

Tepix 3y ago

I've tried to get ChatGPT to correct my french whenever i make (small) mistakes, but it never worked. Is Claude better in that regard? Ideally i want the LLM to correct every single mistake i make and provide an explanation.

dustincoates 3y ago
Claude is much better. I could never get ChatGPT to reliably correct my mistakes, even when I slipped in egregious ones.