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by CouchYam 420 days ago
I sometimes prompt the LLM to talk to me as a <language> instructor - to suggest a topic, ask a question, read my response, correct my grammar, and suggest alternate vocabulary where appropriate. This works quite well. Similar to your comment, I am often hesitant to butcher a language in front of a real person :-).
3 comments

The first step to really learn a language is to be confident and forgive yourself for any mistakes (you’re starting late anyway , and juggling other things).

These days, I do my best to learn and reflect. But any mistakes is just a reminder for more learning (and practice).

> forgive yourself for any mistakes (you’re starting late anyway)

Do you think babies don't make mistakes?

They do, but they also don’t care. Adults tend to do care about that.
So what's the idea behind "you're starting late"?
I contribute to a language-learning forum as a native English speaker, and we constantly get questions from people who are doing exactly what you're doing. The AI does not understand the language, and it will tell you blatantly incorrect information. Especially with less-common constructs, you'll just get very bad advice.
The problem is, AI doesn't let you, or encourage you to create your own style. Word choices, structure, flow, argument building and discourse style is very fixed and "average", since it's a machine favors what it ingests most.

I use Grammarly for grammar and punctuation, and disable all style recommendations. If I let it loose on my piece of text, it converts it to a slop. Same bland, overly optimistic toned text generator output.

So, that machine has no brain, use your own first.