ChatGPT or an AI language tutor: which is best for conversation practice?
→ You can watch and listen to a video version of this article on YouTube.
If you need to practise speaking a foreign language, there are 100s, maybe 1000s, of “AI language tutor chat bot” apps that you could use.
Some are much better than others but a lot of the good ones charge a monthly subscription. I wanted to find out, if you simply want conversation practice, can you just use ChatGPT in voice mode, which is free? Is it the same as using one of the chat bots dedicated to language learning?
I decided to compare ChatGPT voice mode with Langua, which is the best AI tutor app that I’ve found so far. I’ll also compare it to an app that I run, which uses AI in a slightly different way.
Be aware: chat bots are not really for beginners
I first tested in Spanish, a language I have a fairly high level in. I should point out that you should really only bother using an AI chat bot if you have at least a lower-intermediate level. If you’re a beginner, use an app like Busuu where you can learn with properly structured lessons.
Standard and Advanced voice modes
First, I need to explain the distinction between the two voice modes on ChatGPT — Standard and Advanced. Standard is what you get on the free plan and Advanced is what you get on the paid-for Plus plan.
If you want to practice English, Standard voice will give you an authentic American accent.
But, if you’re practising another language you’re going to hear any language spoken with a slightly American accent. As if someone from the US has learnt the language.
Obviously that’s not great, especially if you’re trying to perfect your pronunciation, but if your main goal is to improve your speaking and you don’t care so much about the authenticity of what you’re hearing, then free Standard voice might be enough.
The Advanced voice mode has a much more authentic accent.
Guiding the conversation
Now let’s look at the actual conversation. The type of conversation you could have seemed the same for Standard and Advanced, so free or paid.
But, one very important piece of advice — you need to ask it to roleplay. Don’t just start talking to it and expect it to respond like a friend. Its default is “information mode”, like a living Wikipedia page, where it gives long answers full of generic bland information.
Start by saying something like:
“I want to roleplay a conversation in [LANGUAGE] where you play the role of my friend. I want to talk about [TOPIC].”
With that prompt, the conversation flows much better and feels just about natural enough.
As well as testing this in Spanish, which is a language I speak well, I also tried French, where my speaking level is probably lower-intermediate because I wanted to see what the experience would be like when you’re less confident in a language.
To be honest, I was surprised how well the conversation flowed. It gave me a lot of confidence and made me feel I was better at French than I thought.
If you’re lower level in a language, you could mention that in the prompt.
Let’s compare to an AI language tutor
So now let’s compare ChatGPT to what you could get with a chat bot that’s designed for language practice. I should say, many of the language learning chat bots are using ChatGPT as the basis for their chat bots, but they’ve layered a few things on top to make it more useful.
As a comparison, I’m going to talk about Langua which, after testing a lot of AI language chat bots, is the one that I think is the best.
Voice and text combined
With ChatGPT you have to choose between voice mode or text mode but in a chat bot designed for language learning, you can do both at the same time. You can see the text appear on screen as you’re talking. In ChatGPT you can’t see the text when you’re in voice mode.
Saving vocabulary
In some apps, like Langua, you can also click words within the list and save them to a vocabulary list within the app.
Clear corrections
One of the biggest advantages for me is that an app designed for language practice, does a nice job of presenting mistakes and corrections. The corrections are not always 100% accurate but that’s a separate issue.
You could ask Chat GPT to go back and tell you about mistakes you made, but it will present it out of context in a long and wordy way, where it’s not so obvious what’s changed.
In a language chat bot, you can click to reveal corrections for each message as you say it and, in some apps, though definitely not all, the corrections are displayed in an easy-to-view way.
Below is how corections look in Langua and how it looks in the app that I run. However Talkpal haven’t put much effort into displaying corrections. This is how they do it. It’s more similar to ChatGPT.
Comparing the costs
Let’s weigh up the costs. If you’re already paying the $20 per month for Chat GPT Plus and you only want conversation, no extras, do your language practice there.
If you’re not paying for Chat GPT, I think it’s worth paying for a language chat bot. For example, Langua also costs $20 per month and you get extra features that aren’t available in ChatGPT. I review more of Langua’s features in this video.
Or, if you don’t want to spend anything, you could still get speaking practice with the Standard Voice mode on ChatGPT. The accent will be slightly unnatural but, at least you’ll be speaking!
But, before you decide what to do, here are a few other options for you…
Simple speaking tasks, without conversation
If, like me, you’re a bit cynical about having a fake conversation with a pretend human, there’s an app that simply cuts to the chase and shows you a random topic to talk about for 1 minute.
This is an app that was developed by my co-founder and me. When it comes to the speaking practice in the app, the focus is on a quick and easy one minute of speaking per day, instead of an extended conversation, which might be hard to find time for on a regular basis.
I personally believe that 1 minute of speaking every day, is more useful than 15 minutes once a week.
Also, this app focuses more on you trying again and improving your mistakes the second time round. With a conversational chat bot, sometimes it’s too easy to let the conversation flow on without really paying attention to the mistakes you made. Our app encourages you to try again and do better the second time around.
The other thing you’ll find in the app is recordings of real human native speakers. A downside of always listening to an AI voice is that it’s much easier to understand than the voices you’ll hear in the real world, but our app lets you hear native speakers with a real variety of accents.
Human-like avatars
At the opposite extreme, if you love talking to pretend humans and you want to look at a semi-realistic avatar while you do it, you could try Praktika or Call Annie, which are language chat bots that have exactly that. It’s not my thing personally but it obviously does appeal to some people.
Also, the owner of an app called Scena emailed me recently and they also have a lot of cartoony avatars so you may want to check that out too.
Final thoughts
So, I would say, if you’re serious about language learning, and you’re already a long way into an article about it, so I’m going to say you’re pretty serious, then it’s worth paying something for an AI app that’s dedicated to language learning.
Often in life, you do have to pay for something that’s good quality and worthwhile. Also, I think that sometimes making the commitment to paying for something is all part of keeping you motivated to practice.
But if you don’t have any money to spare, I think you can achieve a lot for free with Standard voice mode on Chat GPT.
