How To Recreate a Popular Language Learning Method with ChatGPT
And whether you should do it too — My experience creating a tailored Assimil Book
I absolutely love the Assimil method as a way to start learning a new language. It’s simple and to the point. In 90 days, you can converse with native people without ever feeling completely lost. I don’t reckon many other methods can get you there.
I decided to start from scratch again in German and created my own Assimil German using ChatGPT. I wanted it tailored to myself and with the possibility to tweak it as I go.
And maybe even continue it past 90 days!
What’s Assimil?
First, let’s explain what that is for those of you who might have not heard of it.
Assimil is a method to learn languages created almost 100 years ago (1929). The concept is to do one lesson a day for 90 days. No need to master the lesson. Once you’ve spent the time, you move on to the next one the next day.
Each lesson is supposed to take about 30 minutes.1 It includes a dialogue on the left page, its translation on the right page, a few simply explained grammar patterns at the bottom of the pages, and two short exercises.
Every seventh day is a “review day” during which the most important patterns to note are, well, reviewed, and explained in more detail.
When you’re halfway through the lessons, you’re supposed to keep going while, at the same time, starting from scratch for an “active wave” which consists of looking at the translation and recreating the dialogues.
Enough about this. Let’s get into the nitty-gritty.
An easy process with ChatGPT-4
Using GPT-4, I was able to recreate it without much trouble. I was even able to link it to a plugin called QuickVoice to get an audio version of the dialogues for free with quite alright pronunciation2 even though it lacks feelings.
Here’s one such recording:
Now, was it perfect from the get-go? Not exactly.
My first test was without using Custom Instructions (CI) with one single prompt:
From now on, each of your messages will serve as a Lesson in the style of Assimil textbooks. You will create a 90-day long German course for me. Each day, I will come to you and ask for the new day's lesson. You will then provide the dialogue alone and a link to the audio of the dialogue you created. After I tell you "gram", you'll provide the translation and grammar to me. Then I will tell you "exo" and you will give me the 2 exercises in the style of Assimil too. every 7th day, you will set a "review lesson" where you talk about the patterns seen during the past week.
The grammar part will not be simple translations of parts of sentences but rather picking a pattern in the dialogue and explaining why this is the one used here or whether that's a commonly used expression, or the patterns associated to gender or cases.
At the end of the lesson, you will ask me how the day's lesson was so we can improve for the next ones.
Reply "OK" if you're ready. Otherwise, ask me any question you may have before we set on this journey.
This was enough for it to start off well. All the directives were followed as I wanted. And yet, we’re not following a book right now so why not make it better?
I decided to give it feedback at the end of each lesson so it could adapt to my wishes. I’ll let you have a look at the conversation for a complete list but here are a few I gave:
Please raise the level. It was too low for me since I already have a bit of German knowledge
Give names to the characters in the dialogue
Be more specific in the gender and class explanation
Don’t reuse sentences from the dialogue in the exercise
Whenever I didn’t understand fully an explanation or sentence, I could just ask ChatGPT to delve deeper. A great addition compared to the original Assimil!
As you can see from the conversation, though, I stopped after Day 7. The reason was I started from scratch using Custom Instructions (CIs) using both versions of ChatGPT.
If you don’t know about CIs, I invite you to check my last post:
Creating AssimilGPT for Free
When I first created AssimilGPT, or A-GPT as I like to call it, I didn’t know how to use Custom Instructions and didn’t realize how useful they were.
So I tried the prompt above with the standard ChatGPT-3.5 and was unable to get anything even remotely like Assimil. It even refused to proceed a few times.
By that time, I had discovered CIs so I began working with GPT-4 and my own knowledge to create CIs that would force ChatGPT-3.5 to answer in a precise pattern.
I would explain to GPT-4 what I wanted, answer its questions, and then test the result with GPT-3.5. From there on, I’d try to modify the CI myself while asking GPT-4 how it’d correct the problems I was facing.
This iteration helped me reach a point with the following CI:
What would you like ChatGPT to know about you?
I'm a beginner learner of [Language]. Starting from scratch with no knowledge of [Language] at all.
How would you like ChatGPT to respond?
You will assist in a 90-day language learning program targeting a B2 level in [Language], inspired by the Assimil method. Here's a detailed breakdown of the Assimil-style lesson:
Dialogue: Each lesson starts with a dialogue. The complexity should correspond to the day number, with early lessons being basic and later lessons being advanced. Dialogues should cover a variety of topics and situations, avoiding repetitive basic greetings or questions. Do not include English translations within the dialogue.
Translation & Grammar: Provide an English translation only when asked. Additionally, break down and explain 5-6 new grammar concepts introduced in the dialogue. These explanations should be detailed, focusing on grammar structures, not mere translations.
Exercises: Provide two exercises when asked:
1. Fill in the Blank: Using the grammar and vocabulary from the dialogue and previous lessons.
2. Translation: Sentences to translate using what's been learned until that day, without reusing exact sentences from the dialogues.
- Answers: Provide solutions to the exercises only when asked.
- Feedback: After providing the answers, ask for feedback on the lesson.
Progression: Remember content from previous lessons to ensure progression and avoid repetition. Each lesson should build upon the previous ones.
Every 7th day is a review day with longer grammar explanations and two extended exercises.
All instructions, explanations, and meta-content should be in English.
Were these enough? Well, not exactly.
As you can see in the conversation, I tried creating AssimilGPT for Haitian Creole (the real Assimil doesn’t offer Haitian Creole).
I won’t bore you with every detail I was satisfied or not satisfied with but, overall, the first lesson went fine. The text was maybe slightly too simple, but it was acceptable.
As the days passed (figuratively, since ChatGPT doesn’t follow the concept of days), I tweaked its responses to make sure it followed what I was looking for. Because, yes, the conversation I shared only shows the “long” path where I was able to move forward.
There were quite a few times I had to regenerate an answer, tweak a prompt and regenerate again, and again. For Day 3’s exercises, I changed the prompt 6 times and regenerated a total of 13 answers before I got the result I wanted.
Was it frustrating? You bet it was.
But it was worth it because I could always refer to it for the following days.
This brings me to an important difference when holding a long “conversation” with ChatGPT compared to GPT-4.
Repetition works best
My new test with CI with GPT-4 for German provided great results.3 I only had to make a few tweaks to make sure it followed my directives but I’ve been able to use it without caring much for “style.” Instead, I ask it questions when I want something clearer and that’s it.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t as straightforward with ChatGPT. I quickly noticed the easiest way to make sure it followed the directives I gave it before was to remind it to do so.
At first, I would go back and copy-paste prompts like
Grammar explanation.
- Not a simple word-by-word translation
- Explaining the important grammar aspects of the language demonstrated in the dialogue
- Building upon knowledge seen before.
or
From now on, the rules of dialogues are:
- Avoid using sentences from previous days.
- Keep the dialogue engaging.
- Progressively make the dialogues slightly longer and complicated.
And after a while, I just said:
Grammar explanation please. Following the directives from previous days.
With GPT-4, saying “from now on” was usually enough for me to never have to repeat myself but ChatGPT, despite CIs, needed the reminder for a while.
AssimilGPT hallucinations
Creating A-GPT was a fun challenge and pushed my prompt engineering skills further. I think it might be possible to make sure even ChatGPT-3.5 follows directives without needing repetition but I haven’t found a perfect way to do so yet.
Should you create your own A-GPT though?
Well, this depends on how much you’re willing to rely on it.
AI is not perfect, especially not when it comes to languages other than English. It can still make mistakes, especially for less-common languages.
Haitian Creole is widely spoken (10-12 million speakers) but I still found many contradictions in the answers I got. I looked online to find whether they were correct and had to debate with ChatGPT to get a “final” answer, which might have been wrong too.
For German, I didn’t see any clearly “wrong” sentence but in my first test with GPT-4 without CI, I received some Duolingo-worthy strange sentences like: “I was unfortunately only at home.”
Final thoughts
Let’s get back to the question again. Should you create your own A-GPT?
I think so. But I also think you should use it as a supplement. No resource is perfect on its own. It’s the combination of multiple ones that makes any great.
I love using my German A-GPT and I’ve even used ElevenLabs to get the audio version of one dialogue in my own “Germanized” voice4:
If you have GPT-4, go for it and enjoy the process, ask questions to further your interrogations.
If you have GPT-3.5, experiment and judge if you enjoy it.
Remember, AI makes it so you can really redirect it as you want. Nothing prevents you from asking it to be different. Here are just a few ideas you could play with:
Ask it to focus on a specific topic for its dialogues so you learn the vocabulary around that precise topic
Lengthen or shorten dialogues or exercises as you want
Add more interactive exercises like questions about the dialogue before getting its translation
Ask it to make each day’s dialogue follow the one before to create a very long story and follow the characters
Ask it to create a file to import in Anki with the sentences of the day.
But above all, have fun.
After all, no fun = no learning.
Have you tried to recreate a method you enjoyed (whether for language learning or not)? If yes, what helped you succeed or what worked against you? Let me know!
And, of course, cheers for reading!
Mathias,
An average polyglot trying to get fluent in the language of AI 😉
It actually takes much less at first and much more at the end. For me, at least.
Had to start requesting a bundle of the weekly lessons to be able to get the recordings for all for free since this plugin allows only 10 downloads per month. Still, I might just use other ones with ChatGPT audio coming out soon.
I’m still using it today, although I’ve missed a few days.
Which seems quite on point apart from some strange “friseur” pronunciation. Still, if I decide to use ElevenLabs again for German, I probably won’t use my own voice!