ChatGPT & ITS USES IN LANGUAGE TEACHING: WEBINAR WITH SCOTT THORNBURY, PRESENTATION SLIDES, PROMPTS, LINKS & MORE

Webinar Hosted by Scott Thornbury, Presentation Slides, Prompts, AI-Powered CEFR Alignment February Challenge, and Some Other Resources I Haven't Thought How to Classify Yet

ChatGPT has caused quite a stir among educators worldwide. There are equal shares of skeptics and enthusiasts when it comes to this technology. Some educators are cautious about using ChatGPT, citing concerns about student privacy and cheating. Others are excited about the opportunities that ChatGPT presents. Despite the differing opinions, one thing is clear: ChatGPT has become the next big thing.

Last Saturday, Scott Thornbury hosted a webinar with Sam Gravell and me on ChatGPT and its uses in language teaching. You can watch the webinar on YouTube. We hope it will help you answer the question of the moment – To ChatGPT, or Not To ChatGPT – based on:

Scott Thornbury’s fantastic checklist that may come in handy when deciding whether you should invest your precious time in learning about and using a particular EdTech tool – when you know the ‘why’, the ‘how’ is easy;
A description of what a large language model is and what it can be used for – when you understand the algorithm behind the tool, the ‘how’ is even easier; and
Lots of great examples of practical applications of the model.

If you have already tried ChatGPT and have discovered some useful use cases, please share them with us in the comments section.

Presentation slides:

You can view both Sam’s and my presentations on Canva:

Presentation by Sam Gravell

My presentation

7 key questions that Scott highlighted to keep in mind with any EdTech tool include:

Adaptivity: How adaptive/versatile/flexible is the tool?
Authenticity: Does it provide exposure to, and practice of, real language in use?
Creativity: Does it encourage creative language use?
Interactivity: Does it provide opportunities for person-to-person interaction?
Mediation: Does it scaffold learning by – for example – providing constructive feedback? A focus on form?
Autonomy: Does it support self-directed and self-regulated language use?
Engagement: Is there an optimal balance of challenge and fun to guarantee sustained attention and use?

Sam gave a great presentation on his experience utilizing ChatGPT as a business English trainer, and you can find his slides here. His ideas are sure to inspire our peers from BESIG and course designers. I’m already thinking of trying a few of his ideas in my next project.

In my presentation, I showcased a few use cases of ChatGPT relevant to my context. The main focus, though, was on what a large language model (LLM) is and how to interact with it effectively. With more and more use cases of LLMs and their development, prompt crafting will soon add to the ‘four Cs’ of 21st-century learning. You can find my slides here.

The audience was fantastic, and so was the feedback. I hope the webinar will inspire teachers to experiment with large language models (LLMs) and come up with new use cases and ideas on how to use and interact with LLMs effectively.

A few teachers reached out to me after the webinar, asking for resources they could use to learn more about ChatGPT prompt crafting or ‘whispering.’ So, I promised to share a few (hopefully) helpful prompt templates that I created for the February AI Challenge Mini Boot Camp with the Virtual Exchange Center.

ChatGPT Prompt Templates for Language Teachers:

Text generation

Lesson planning

‘Write a lesson plan to teach expressions of probability’ (unedited output)

See the prompt above (unedited output)

Making rubrics

Examples (unedited):

After the final session of the February Challenge next Tuesday, I’ll add more prompts. Our next session is all about lesson planning. We’ll also try some prompts with ChatGPT or GPT-3 in live mode. So stay tuned!