I’m looking to improve my output, but I don’t know any Japanese people and I feel awkward chatting with them anyway on italki. Recently I found someone on discord to practice chatting but the difference in our fluency levels was clear and I think he got bored very quickly.
Which leads me to wonder if AI would be a suitable partner to practice chatting with? Can it correct us if we use wrong grammar?
Edit –
Follow-up question for those who have tried Italki at N5 or early N4 level. How much did you manage to chat with native speakers given that your fluency is quite basic? Are they very patient with you? Do you need to constantly find new partners to practice with or you stick with one?
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3 comments
It might be akin to two learners trying to speak Japanese. Which can help with confidence but would leave bad habits. The Japanese produced is probably similar to Google Translate or maybe a bit better or worse.
As for your edit. It varies from person to person. Some Japanese people are selfish and only speak English, or they could speak no English and only speak Japanese. It depends on the person how patient they are. I’ve had good experiences.
Nah. Use HelloTalk for that 🙂
Yes, there are people doing that. It’s foolish so you shouldn’t be like them.
When deciding whether to do a task with ChatGPT, ask yourself if it’s something you can do using autocorrect – randomly or semi-randomly mashing the auto-complete buttons.
Try to remember or improvise a recipe for seven-layer dip? Sure. You’re smart enough to not make seven-layer dick by accident. Get meaningful feedback about how to communicate with people? Yeah, no, let’s no.
*Yes,* I know GPT is surprisingly good at tasks it wasn’t trained for. (“zero shot learning” is the buzzword) The key is “surprisingly.” There is absolutely no reason to trust that it can perform well in a task just because you hope it will.