More Practice for The English Gym

Here is one more followup post about ways to use ChatGPT to study for our Communication English class using text from The English Gym. 

One way to check to see whether you have learned the material is to have a conversation about it using the vocabulary and ideas within the unit. To do that, you can type in the vocabulary words from the first and second pages of each unit, and it would probably be useful to scan in the 10 questions or even the text from the interview and ask ChatGPT to ask you followup questions. Let's see how it works.

Here's the vocabulary from page 66:

but, date, how, often, out, prefer, reall, someday, what, would

And here's the vocabulary from page 67.

Korean food, Thai food, French cuisine, home cooked meals, soba noodles, udon noodles, rice balls, sandwiches, fried chicken, ham and eggs, hamburger, French fries, juice, soda, sports drink, spicy, sour, eat out, tip

1. Let's ask ChatGPT to help us study the vocabulary.

Prompt: Please help me learn this vocabulary. I am a native speaker of Japanese.

Here's what we get:

Sure, here are the explanations for the vocabulary words you provided:

Page 66:

• But: conjunction used to indicate a contrast or exception.

• Date: the day of the month or year as specified by a number.

• How: in what way or manner; to what extent, degree or amount.

• .

• .

• .

2. That's OK, but let's ask it to do it in Japanese.

Prompt: Please do that in Japanese.

もちろんです。提供していただいた単語の説明を以下に示します。

ページ66：

• But: 対比や例外を示す接続詞。

• Date: 日付のことで、数字で指定された月の日または年。

• How: どのように、どの程度、どのくらいという意味の副詞

• .

• .

• .

3. Pretty cool, right? Now let's try to get it to help us study.

Prompt: Please ask one word in English and check my answer in Japanese. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Sure! Here's your word: "prefer". What does it mean in Japanese?

変える

I'm sorry, but "変える" means "to change" in Japanese. "Prefer" means "好む" or "好みがある" in Japanese.

You can see that my guess 変え was wrong, and ChatGPT corrected it.

Now we can ask for the next word.

Prompt: Next word

And ChatGPT replies

Sure, your word is "sour". What does it mean in Japanese?

4. Now let's ask it to randomize the words. We should have done that before!

Prompt: Please randomize the words

Sure, no problem! Here's your randomized word: "out". What does it mean in Japanese？

外

That's correct! "Out" means "外" in Japanese. Well done!

Success! Again, we can ask it for the next word.

5. Now let's try to have it create a multiple choice vocabulary quiz. We will probably need to give pretty specific directions to get it to understand. You can keep asking for changes until ChatGPT gets it right. 

Prompt: Now create a multiple choice quiz using the vocabulary with four choices, a, b, c, and d. Use a synonym for the correct answer and do not use the word you are asking about.

Great idea! Here's a multiple choice quiz using the vocabulary words:

Which word means "frequently"?

a) Date

b) Prefer

c) How

d) Often

Which word means "food from Korea"?

a) French cuisine

b) Thai food

c) Korean food

d) Home cooked meals

You can see that it started asking all the questions, so I stopped the generation and asked 

Prompt:Ask one at a time and check my answers

Sure, here's the first question:

Which word means "frequently"?

a) Date

b) Prefer

c) How

d) Often

My answer: d

That's correct! "Often" means "frequently". Well done!

Prompt: Next question

6. Conversation

Finally, let’s ask ChatGPT to ask us questions based on the questions in the book. Maybe something like,
Prompt: Now let’s have a conversation. Ask me conversation questions (not vocabulary). Wait for my answer and and correct the grammar of my answers. Please ask the questions one at a time.  Do you live around here? What's your neighborhood like? Can you tell me about your neighbors? What's your home like? What are some fun things to do in your neighborhood? How do you get to school? What do you usually do on your commute to school? What's something you don't like about your neighborhood? Where would you like to live in the future? Would you like to live in a mansion someday?
ChatGPT responded;
Sure, let's get started! Here's the first question:

Do you live around here?

Example response: Yes, I live in this neighborhood.
This isn’t what we wanted, so I’m gonig to ask it to not give the answers.
Prompt: Just ask one question. Do not give the answers. Correct my answer if necessary, and then ask the next question.
Sure, here's the first question:

ChatGPT: Do you live around here?

My answer: No, I living in Nagoya.

ChatGPT correction: No, I live in Nagoya.

Prompt: Next question.

What's your neighborhood like?

As you can see, there are lots of ways that you can use ChatGPT to practice and study for the Communication English class.

Using ChatGPT to practice the sentences from The English Gym

 Here is another way you can use ChatGPT to do your homework. You can copy in the instructions below into ChatGPT

I would like to have a conversation with ChatGPT using the following questions. Please ask me the first question. If I make a grammatical error, please give me the correction. I will type "Next question" when I want to move on.

And then type in the 10 questions. Here are the questions from Unit 3. 

Here are the 10 questions: Do you live around here? What's your neighborhood like? Can you tell me about your neighbors? What's your home like? What are some fun things to do in your neighborhood? How do you get to school? What do you usually do on your commute to school? What's something you don't like about your neighborhood? Where would you like to live in the future? Would you like to live in a mansion someday? If ChatGPT starts answering all the questions and giving your answers, click Stop Generating and type in "Next Question!"
Remember you have control over the interaction. You can ask ChatGPT to have a conversation with you about anything and in any language.

Optical Character Scanning (OCR) using Google Keep

I promised in a previous blog post to show how to take a picture of something with words you want to be able to use somewhere else, such as to translate to another language, to use in a paper for class, or something you want to save to remember later. Remember to write where you copied any text use or you might get in trouble!
However, today we are going to talk about how to load in text that you would like to use in ChatGPT. For example, you might make a word study list, to have ChatGPT write new study questions for you.

It is very easy and free(!) to use Google Keep as a kind of scanner. You can upload pictures of text, posters, anything with words and have Google Keep scan the image for the text. I will show the steps and then share a website where you can change the text so you can use it in a Google Doc or elsewhere.

Here are the steps. I will add pictures later to match each step.

1. Open Google Keep: Open the Google Keep app on your phone or tablet. If you don't have the app on your smartphone, you can download it for free from the Google Play Store or the App Store.
2. Create a new note: Click on the "New note" icon at the bottom right corner of the screen. It looks like a plus sign on an iPhone.
3. Give your note a title. I also like to click on the little pin at the top so that the newest note is at the top. You can also give the note a new label or use a label you already have.
4. Tap on the camera icon in the note and select "Scan document." Point the camera at the picture of the text you want to scan and take a photo of it. I often cover the text I don't want to use so I can put the picture directly into Google Keep. Otherwise, you can take a picture using the camera on your smartphone and edit the text you want to use and load that into Google Keep.
5. Change the image to text: Tap on the three dots in the top right corner of the screen and select "Grab image text." Google Keep will now convert the image to text you can change using a word processor or Google Docs.
6. One thing I like to do is to copy the text to a free website that lets me reformat the text, such as by taking out the returns at the end of each line so I can easily change the right hand margin, for example. I like to use this one at text fixer The link is directly to the page where you can remove breaks.

That's it! You have now used Google Keep and to create text you can work with.Next you can copy it into ChatGPT and do some of the things I mentioned in previous blogs.