by Rebekka Klingshirn, Heidelberg IWC and high school and vocational school teacher
I have to admit: I’ve been so bored with my own teaching lately, something had to change. Don’t get me wrong: my students were successful and all passed their A-Levels in English every year I taught that age group (German is typically their first language, English is new for them in first or third grade). My lessons were streamlined to the max: we practiced writing compositions, we practiced critical thinking, reasoning why a statement was true or false, etc. Even my “little ones” (students come to my vocational high school at the age of 14, or 8th grade) knew exactly what to do when: get out your vocabulary booklets, copy the words, revise them at home, practice reading, writing, listening comprehension in English.
Both age groups were and are quite successful in acquiring knowledge in a foreign language and in their exams. But I was and am bored. I caught myself just briefly looking at the school book the evening before classes and deciding which exercises to do next on the spot. Over the past couple of months, however, I have been sitting at my desk more and more, so much so that my family is wondering what is wrong with me… 😊
I have discovered AI for my teaching and have been spending a lot of time watching videos, learning how to use the different AI-based platforms and how to write good and effective AI prompts.
What do I love most about AI?
- Writing a lesson plan or unit plan takes only minutes now! What a relief!
- I can ask AI to transform a text into a podcast or interview with the accents that I want the speakers to have. I used to speak with different voices myself – and you all know how we sound on tape…
- I can finally really individualize the learning experiences for my students. While I used to just pull out the same trusted worksheets on passive voice, for example, from my all-time favorite grammar practice book by Raimond Murphy, English Grammar in Use (if you’re looking for an equally excellent German grammar book go to this one: Dreyer/Schmitt: A Practice Grammar of German: English Edition, Hueber Verlag), I can use AI to generate practice worksheets for each individual student: You like horses? You like football? You like drawing? Minecraft? Fortnite? – No problem, I can give you the same grammar phenomenon to practice within a click of a button. While knowing that “bonding” over a topic of interest would enhance the learning experience, there has never been a time before where I could give every child what they need.
- I can finally give individualized feedback to all the homework and extra work the kids put in. Without the help of AI, I would give homework, look at one or maybe two compositions, perhaps one in class so everyone could see that student’s feedback. After the first shock of being quasi-put on the spot in front of everyone, the whole group realized that this feedback really helped them improving their own writing if they were willing to put in the work of revising their own work. But, you might say, the students will just use AI to write their compositions and then they will be “perfect” anyway? – Of course they will – and there’s nothing wrong with that if we’re focusing on writing and developing prompts. But, not just my Seniors are smart enough to know that an AI-written homework doesn’t help them at all if they want to improve their writing. And they know that I will be able to tell if they’ve written it themselves or not (trust me, my ESL students cannot write a text without at least one missing “third person singular s.” They also know that I won’t be reading their homework – an AI will. The AI will give feedback according to my prompts (i.e., the way they will be graded by me in a class test and in a final exam) that match the respective exercise. According to my prompts, the students are given feedback of the things that went well and passages that need improvement. Then, if the students want, they can hand in a corrected second version of their homework. And many do. And so many more now do their homework than before…
What do I still find difficult about using AI?
- The feedback program that I use is really, really friendly to the students. 😊 Don’t get me wrong, I am as well, but when it comes to the feedback program I can use here in Germany, I have found that it is not as strict (and straightforward…) as I am. The obvious advantage is that the students are encouraged and not discouraged: even if they wrote hardly anything at all, the AI generated feedback will find something positive to say about their effort. I wonder, though, if the students will end up being disappointed by the actual grade they get in their class test compositions in the end…
- I still need a lot of time to write the feedback prompts for the AI. When I usually mark a paper, I have all the do’s and don’t’s in my head and need to only read a composition once to be able to give a grade and, if necessary, defend it – a colleague and I have been co-marking each other’s class tests every now and then and come to the same grades, but she needs twice as much time as I do. That might have to do with experience. But when I now sit down to actually write the prompts for the AI, it takes me forever, it seems, and I sometimes wonder if that is really worth all the effort.
- ChatGPT (and the sub-AIs that I have been using) is dumb. Sorry, but there is no better way to say it. The other day I was preparing a grammar worksheet to review participial clauses with and without “while” and was looking for pictures as conversation starters. I asked the AI to create a picture of a kangaroo on the beach and got this. We had a great laugh during the lesson – definitely a conversation starter…
- Let me say it again: ChatGPT is dumb. I asked for practice sentences with participle clauses such as “Many people gather at the harbor, watching the spectacular fireworks while enjoying the festive atmosphere.” It took me more than half an hour before the chatbot finally got the exercises right. In between, it was trying to convince me that all sort of grammar phenomena were participle clauses. I won. Of course. 😊
- The time I need to correct and proofread what the AI hands me as the correct answer can only be justified because I hope that in the end it will give me more time to do what I love most: teach.
Summing up – I think AI is here to stay and I am looking forward to find out all it has to offer. Preparing my classes has finally turned into a fun task again, and that is more than I could have hoped for.
