A Few Compelling Reasons to Use Copilot as a Language Learner
It's still not perfect but it sure it a great add-on with some incredible features.
Nobody uses Bing because they prefer it.
Using Bing as a search engine is only a backup choice.1 We all know Google’s search results are better than Bing's.
Despite this, Microsoft keeps on pushing it year after year. Like its incredible Internet Explorer or, as we call it now, Edge, it’s there. We know it. We don’t really care.
So when I heard of BingChat’s launch, I wasn’t expecting much. Sure, it was linked to ChatGPT so there was potential for good but I still had high doubts.
Months later, I now think it’s become a useful tool in an ever-bigger toolbox.
Luckily, Microsoft recently renamed BingChat to Copilot so I can pretty much stick to saying Bing isn’t good 😈 and just compliment Copilot for its use. Hell, you get 5 responses per conversation if you use BingChat and 30 if you use Copilot from the app or specialized website. And that’s the same product!
Anyway. I’ve played quite a bit with Copilot ever since I began preparing for my comparison of tools back in late November.
Here are just a few uses worth giving it a go at.
Copilot’s still got a long way to go
Like Bard, Copilot is still clearly a work in progress.
For example, its capacities change drastically from the webpage to the app Copilot. You can also access it from the Bing app but then you get fewer messages as mentioned above.
You can also send voice messages to Copilot but it doesn’t automatically recognize the language so you have to set the “Speech language” to the language you want to speak.
Oh, but if you start making it talk in another language, it’ll respond with an extremely stereotypical accent of said country.2 Mix this up and you get a French accent speaking Chinese or a Korean accent speaking Spanish.
If you’re trying to get an explanation of a language’s grammar or some translation, you’re going to have a surprise when it comes to the audio response.
Sure that’s a problem only language learners would go through but I reckon there are more than a few of us around the world. 😅
This is still in the app though. Because I still haven’t found where to change the speech language on the web version. It’s stuck to English for me.3
It also doesn’t seem to realize in which language it’s answering since I once tried to switch from English to Spanish and get an explanation in Spanish, only to get the following answer…
Finally, you can choose between three conversation styles.
This can be great in theory but I don’t see much reason to use anything else than “More Creative.” Indeed, this is the only mode using GPT-4 and therefore giving much more accurate responses to prompts.
It’s also a shame we can’t switch in the middle of a conversation if we suddenly just care for links. But well.
Where Copilot shines
Now, I’ve complained quite a bit about it so it’s time to talk about the reasons it still deserved an entire piece about it.
Despite its flaws, it also does a lot well.
I’ve mentioned before how we can listen to responses in audio format while reading their written version, a dream come true for language learners missing audio format or still struggling with just audio (as I am in Chinese).
It’s also the only free tool to provide access to a great image generator in an AI chatbot: DALL-E 3. Why does this matter?
For most people, it’s not that useful of a tool. As language learners, however, we can ask it to create images and then request an explanation of one of these images.
Do that request from the Copilot app and you’ll get to see the written explanation of an image you have in front of your eyes, while listening to that explanation out loud.
If that’s not some incredibly dual-coding tool, I don’t know what it is!
But it doesn’t stop there!
You can also activate one of the few plugins available, Suno, to turn this into a song in your target language in the style of your choice!
Here’s a Korean song about our cute raccoon underwater smoking pipe.
The Suno plugin can also become a support to brute-force some words you struggle to remember. You could ask it 5 times to create a song in your target language using that word and then put these in repeat in the background while you clean the dishes.
I’ve done this for the word 身份 which means “identity” and I’m not ready to forget it (see at the end for one of the examples I’ve listened to on repeat).
Finally,4 the webpage version of Copilot does one more thing the app doesn’t. One potentially game-changer function for students in general and language learners.
There’s a download button for each answer. 🤯
It’s possible to download each answer in either txt, doc, or pdf. Why does this matter you ask? Can’t we simply copy the text, you ask?
Well, you’ve got a point. We could just copy-paste. There’s even a button for it.
For Anki, Quizlet, or other such Spaced-Repetition-Software users, however, this is a godsend. They can request the translation separated by an emdash,5 download the txt file, and import it to their tool.
All of a sudden, creating new flashcards is even faster than the method I explained in the past here with ChatGPT.
Game-changer I tell ya.
Copilot’s got potential if it solves this
As far as AI chatbots go, Copilot still needs to be made clearer to become more useful.
I recently listened to the audiobook of “The Design of Everyday Things” and the author often insists on making things clear for the user. Well, that’s not Copilot’s forte.
Still, I hope this helped you get clearer on some uses you could use as a learner, and more specifically as a language learner.
As for me, I’m turning back to this new banger of a Chinese song about the term “identity” (身份)
Thanks for reading and until next time!
Mathias
Whether the reason’s because Google’s blocked in your country or because you don’t trust Google with your data.
I asked it something in English even though the speech-language was set to Japanese and got a perfect English written response but a stereotypical Japanese accent, almost pushed to the extreme.
Which is neither my Microsoft account’s language (French) nor the one set for the Copilot app (never English, most often Traditional Chinese)
I came upon this by accident and was shocked this was not advertised more.
Not a semicolon though, Copilot doesn’t listen if you ask for a semicolon