Improve your English using AI chat bots.

While some students take shortcuts and use AI for cheating, teachers either tend to completely ignore its existence, or ban its use altogether.

I decided to explore some harmless ways chat bots can actually prove a helpful learning tool. In my experiment, I used ChatGPT and Quillbot. Here are 5 ways you can try and use AI software to help you study and improve your English, especially if you don't have access to classes, or enjoy studying in your own.

1. Ask ChatGPT to explain a grammar point to you.

My first request was to explain the use of the Present Perfect tense with examples, and here is what AI came up with:

The response looked like a good summary and a starting point to explore the grammar further, but I would probably need more information (then again, I could ask some follow-up questions!)

2. Ask AI for other ways to say something.

Whether you are looking for a synonym of a specific word, or other ways to express agreement / disagreement / opinions, etc., ChatGPT could be a good place to check, especially if you haven't got anyone else to ask. My question was about other ways to say ‘I understand’ that could be used in informal situations, and here’s the response:

3. Ask AI to check your writing

For the record, I am not encouraging you to cheat. However, you might find the chat bot useful if you are studying for a writing test, and haven’t got a tutor nearby to check your work.

I found a random IELTS essay online and asked the bot to check and correct the vocabulary and grammar. Here is the original text:

And here is the corrected version:

Make sure to carefully compare both versions and try to see why the bot made the corrections it did. If unsure, you can still ask the bot (or your tutor!)

4. Ask Quillbot to summarise a text for you.

Whether you are reading an academic text, a work document or a news article in English, sometimes you might want to make sure you understood the information correctly.

Use Quillbot to generate a summary of the text you are reading, like I did with this article:

5. Ask Quillbot to generate citations for your essay or dissertation

OK, this last one is a bit of a cheat! But you might appreciate it if you are a uni student.

If there is one thing I used to absolutely hate while I was doing my Master’s, it was adding the bibliography list. It’s a very laborious and mechanical task that I would gladly delegate to a machine. Luckily, now you can just ask AI to generate citations for you.

I asked Quillbot to generate one for the United Nations sustainability goals webpage. And voila!

It was kind enough to provide an in-text citation as well.

Just remember to check the referencing format for your university, as you might have to make some changes, but it’ll still be much easier than typing the citations up.

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Whether we like it or not, it looks like the technology is here to stay. It still comes with multiple drawbacks, and isn't likely to replace English tutors any time soon. Yet it will probably get more powerful and widespread, so it might make sense to try and harness its powers for our benefit.

How do you feel about using AI as a language learner?

• I'm already using it!
• I might give it a try.
• It's not for me.