GPT Chat for an English teacher

Lessons are just the tip of the iceberg of teaching work, and most of the time is spent preparing materials for classes. Sometimes this is a creative process, but most of it is a routine and monotonous work that takes a lot of time. However, GPT chat seems to be able to save us from boring tasks, freeing up more time for finding interesting materials and live communication with students, and also significantly help in analyzing student work.

Disclaimer: I am not an IT person, not an expert in the field of artificial intelligence, and not even an experienced GPT chat user, but a simple teacher. I do not pretend to the truth and the optimality of requests to the chat. Please be understanding 🙂

What areas of application of GPT chat I found in my work:

1. Working with vocabulary:
   – preparation of a list of words (wordlist) by language levels based on text or video;
   — selection of definitions for words in English and examples, or translations into Russian (then the finished list can be inserted, for example, into Quizlet and get ready-made cards);
   — creating an exercise with missing words;
   – generating text based on a list of words;
   — selection of synonyms and antonyms for words from the list.

2. Working with grammar:
   — generating examples of grammatical structure;
   — creation of tasks for opening brackets;
   — creating a series of exercises.

3. Checking homework and reviewing written work (e.g. essays).

4. Generating Discussion Questions.

5. Create a lesson plan or series of lessons.

6. Generating images on the topic for the design of materials using the GPT-friendly neural network DALL-E chat.

7. Finding answers to students’ questions and creating materials for posts on social networks.

The main advantages of working with GPT chat are that it is free, does not require prior training and potentially saves a lot of time. True, sometimes the free version blunts or gives an error at times of high demand, but for now this can be put up with simply reloading the page. The main disadvantage is that sometimes it is difficult to explain to the chat what exactly you want to receive (especially in terms of formatting), and often it reacts differently to the same request. Well, we teachers are no strangers to this.

Further, I will tell you in detail about each aspect, I will attach screenshots and sample requests. I made requests in English, because it is more convenient for me, but GPT chat also understands Russian well.

Working with vocabulary

1. GPT parses the suggested text and creates a list of words according to language levels. I heard that the same can be done with a video by simply inserting a link to it, but for some reason it doesn’t work for me: the chat analyzes another video or just fantasizes. Therefore, I copied the script from YouTube and pasted it into the chat as a written text.

2. For each word from the list, the chat is able to select definitions from a given source, if you specify it (in my case, it was a Cambridge dictionary), and examples. It is interesting that he himself determines the part of speech and selects a definition based on it, although, of course, he may not understand the meaning: for example, in my text there was about litter of kittens – a brood of kittens, and the chat offered me the definition of litter as garbage. Therefore, one must look carefully, but in general, for the vast majority of words, he selects successful definitions and examples.

   You can set the formatting you want, such as using certain characters or removing parts of speech in parentheses. For example, my query was: Delete the brackets and the information in the brackets. Delete the word “example” in all definitions. Use bold for the definitions and italics for the examples. Experimentally, I found out that he doesn’t know how to make text bold at all, italics are obtained every other time (but it doesn’t matter to me, because when copying to Quizlet, the design still disappears). Chat can replace one character with another (Use – instead of : . Use : instead of ;), but for some reason it doesn’t want to replace one information in brackets with another (for example, the word level is written in brackets, and I need to insert a translation instead into Russian), maybe I’m not explaining clearly. I have not yet found the ideal query for selecting definitions in the formatting I need, so each time I refine the formatting several times. And in general, it seems to me that formatting is better when you write all the conditions not at once, but iteratively.

   

   Of course, instead of definitions in English, you can choose a translation of words, or you can do both.

   

3. We copy the finished list into Quizlet – and the cards are ready! Along the way, we control the result, if necessary, edit the definitions, highlight the necessary bold, italic or color, select pictures – but this already takes much less time.

   

   

4. We use the created list of words as the basis for a story on a given topic. My query was “Use the words to write a short text about choice and making decisions:”

5. If the text turns out to be meaningful and in the middle of the road no one suddenly gets off their horses when they were driving a car before, then we copy the text into Wordwall, Progressme, Amazy or other services, select the necessary words – that’s all, the task for repeating words is also ready.

   

6. If you do not use additional services or work offline, you can do the exercise in the chat itself:

8. You can also choose synonyms and antonyms for the words:

I also wanted the chat to come up with anagrams, but the answer turned out to be somewhat amateurish, especially Pisser 🙂

Working with grammar

To work with grammar, GPT chat can create examples of some kind of grammatical structure (however, I could not get it to come up with sentences on a given topic).

It also does a great job of creating some tasks, such as the gap-fill task:

But you can go further: generate a series of exercises for a given grammar. Here is what the chat gave me when I asked “Create a series of series of exercises to practice the first conditional”:

Sure! Here’s a series of exercises to practice the first conditional:

Exercise 1: Complete the sentence with the correct first conditional form of the verb in parentheses.

1. If it (rain) tomorrow, we (stay) at home.

2. If you (study) hard, you (pass) the test.

3. If she (call) me, I (be) very happy.

4. If they (arrive) late, we (start) without them.

5. If he (work) hard, he (earn) a promotion.

Exercise 2: Choose the correct first conditional sentence to complete the dialogue.

A: I don’t have an umbrella.
B: If it (rains / will rain), you (will get / get) wet.
A: I think I’ll stay inside.
B: If you (stay / will stay) inside, you (won’t get / get) wet.

Exercise 3: Complete the sentence with the correct first conditional form of the verb in parentheses.

1. If she (not have) any plans, we (go) to the movies.

2. If I (get) the job, I (buy) a new car.

3. If they (not come) to the party, we (be) disappointed.

4. If it (snow), we (build) a snowman.

5. If you (not hurry), you (miss) the train.

Exercise 4: Rewrite the sentence using the first conditional.

1. I won’t go out if it rains.

2. He won’t be happy if he fails the test.

3. We won’t have any food if we don’t go to the store.

4. They won’t win the game if they don’t practice.

5. She won’t get the job if she doesn’t have any experience.

The fourth task looks dubious, but the first three can be edited and used. The suggestions look typical for this topic, but I did not find exactly such tasks on the Internet: it seems that he generates them himself, and does not just take suitable ones from the Internet. By the way, at the end of the series of exercises there were answers, although I did not ask for them.

For the sake of experiment, I tried to make a presentation in the chat, and he began to write a generally good plan, but then something strange began: each subsequent slide was two examples, and the slide after it was one sentence with a gap-fill exercise, and so on circle until I stop it.

And, of course, the chat suggests grammar rules and gives feedback on our suggestions.

Checking homework and analyzing written work

Another function follows from the previous function: the chat is able to check sentences and text for errors and give detailed feedback, moreover, politely, with a balance of positive and negative sides, like a professional teacher. If students are typing a text, we can quickly check it using the chat and then add our own explanations if necessary.

In addition, the chat is able to approximately evaluate the text according to the IELTS criteria, and its assessment looks quite plausible, although a little cruel. Of course, we cannot fully rely on it (at least not yet), but it helps a lot to draw attention to the shortcomings of the work, quickly assess its quality and save time on typing feedback. Interestingly, he even “understands” the main idea of ​​the text and writes that he was able to convey it effectively.

Of course, a chat can also “write” an essay on its own, but here I would not trust him: despite the fact that he more or less correctly understands the format and assessment criteria, you should not count on him to give a role model. But there are some things you can take on board.

Generating Discussion Questions

For conversation classes or conversation club meetings, it can be difficult to come up with good questions on a given topic. Chat helps here too.

The questions suggested by the chat seemed pretty good to me, and I chose some for discussion. However, these questions reflect more the social side of the issue, so I wanted to supplement them with more personal ones – it turned out pretty well too, you can choose a couple.

You can try to generate questions on a given topic in an exam format, but here the result is not ideal.

The chat also comes up with questions based on the given text and selects quotes from famous people on a specific topic (the quotes are real, I checked).

Create a lesson plan or series of lessons

The chat is quite adequate in offering lesson plans on various topics. In his arsenal there is also work with pictures (but he does not select them himself), and dialogues, and various exercises. The plan is spelled out for all stages, includes goals, a list of materials, level, duration, and so on.

In addition to the lesson plan, you can also generate a course plan. At my request “a course on grammar for B1-B2 levels” GPT chat suggested an 8-week plan, prescribed course objectives, materials used, assessment methods, provided a general description of the course and a note that this plan is preliminary and can be changed at the discretion of the teacher . It seems to me that such a plan will be useful if you need to prescribe the content of the course in any formal documents, but perhaps some of the ideas will really come in handy in practice.

You can also look for interesting ideas for lessons:

Generation of images on the theme for the design of materials (DALL-E)

GPT chat does not generate pictures itself, but the DALL-E neural network does. This is also the brainchild of Open AI, so you can use it from the same account. 15 generations per month, each with 4 pictures, are free. The images almost always come out pretty pretty, so I use them to design presentations and illustrate my own. telegram channel.

Search for answers to students’ questions and materials for posts in social networks

Chat can ask any question, as we usually do in Google, and then clarify the answer several times. It is convenient that you can rephrase, check whether you understood his answer correctly, and invite him to correct you.

Also, if you are posting on social networks, you can use GPT chat to create posts with any content.

But jokes, they say, come out funnier about designers than about English teachers. A little embarrassing.

Thank you for reading the long post to the end and I hope you found it useful or interesting! By the way, in telegram channel I post stuff for English learners, including teachers. I would be glad if you take a look!