At the start of November I began using a few AI apps to practice speaking in Russian, in particular Pingo AI. It was quite exciting at first but I’ve recently been feeling disheartened with my progress.
After 11 - 12 months of learning Russian, quite consistently, sometimes 2-3 hours a day, I’m really struggling to string a sentence together. However, I am experienced enough to know that having a good level in understanding doesn’t automatically translate into a good level in speaking.
But I do have a few thoughts. I have the feeling that when using AI to speak, it’s actually more difficult than speaking to a person. I can’t shake off the feeling that the conversations with AI are forced and I never feel that I can express myself, with mistakes, as freely as when speaking to a person.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you guys have any experience using AI for speaking practice?
If you have a lot of input, and you learnt the alphabet and the pronunciation well before reading, so that your subvocalization wasn’t completely off, you will catch up quickly with speaking. It’s just training. Be consistent!
True with AI, it’s a different type of conversation, but it is worth it. I do both, and I speak with AI on a daily basis. Use, or download, different AIs and experiment with different prompts to see how they react, and where you find yourself more comfortable.
You can use them also to repeat sentences or perform different drills. Don’t think about having fun, think about training in the right way to be effective.
My personal ability to speak depends on my ability to write. If I can express myself in a written form, I will be able to express myself orally. The writing does not require the speed of a real life conversation. By writing, it is possible to check the grammer, to find a word in a dictionary, to correct something. Only then when I can write without corrections and when the writing process goes quick, I may be more or less sure I could practice my speaking.
That’s very useful. I always advocate for learning to write. Second language learners can match writing and speaking because their writing is simple, and they can transfer it to speaking as well. When you speak, your mind can visualize the writing, and you can make fewer mistakes.
However, this is a limit too if you want to advance to a better level because writing and speaking become almost two different languages. You write in a certain way, and you speak in a certain way. Both require their unique training. With speaking, especially at a popular level, you need speed, chunks of words, quick back-and-forth interaction, and adapt your language to the people you are talking to. Otherwise, you risk sounding like an academic all the time.
But yes, writing helps a lot, like active listening and reading.
I’ve tried speaking with an AI and it was able to understand my mistakes and move on. Normal AIs also understand written mistakes (typos, grammatical errors, etc). The one I used sounded remarkably human in its replies. So I don’t think there’s much to worry about. Keep in mind you also have to INSTRUCT the AI on how you want it to reply (friendly? formal? correct you?).
I second writing a lot. The faster you can write, the faster you can THINK in the language, and that also slowly improves speaking ability. Speaking is definitely a second skill, separate from other skills, but writing doesn’t hurt.
I prefer to avoid speaking to natives because of the “stakes”. I don’t want native speakers laughing at me or, even worse, refusing to talk to me because my skills are too low. I’ve lived in a lot of foreign countries and experienced a lot. Getting insulted or laughed at for my mistakes does not make me want to work harder, it makes me want to stop talking altogether.
I never experienced getting insulted, and that might not be only for the language skills, but it’s not part of this discussion.
However, I can understand the frustration of native people if our language is too basic when we interact. We need to be able to hold a conversation that can flow a little bit for interacting with the general population. I guess that would be a B2 level, more or less. Otherwise, we should interact only with people that we are more comfortable with, or that they are patient.
Regarding being laughed at, that’s part of the deal; you don’t have to take it too personally. It’s not an ego thing. If that happens to me, I usually laugh as well with the others, and I ask them the correct pronunciation, and what I said, and even worse, what it meant what I said. And I usually laugh again.
Sometimes a small mistake can mean some embarrassing thing. You can just laugh as well about it, and learn from it.
@JoshDTutor : regarding AI, another tip I have for you is to use it for repeating sentences out loud. For example, you could use Claude for this, because with the app, you have to click after you speak. That makes it easier to calculate the timing.
Just ask the app to tell you a random sentence that you want to repeat, and to correct your pronunciation. And so on, sentence after sentence until you have enough for the day. You write your own prompt.
It’s a good way to train the muscles of the mouth to improve your pronunciation.
Thank you for the advice. I haven’t used Claude yet, but I’ll give it a try.
I’ve just passed 6000 known words in Russian (many of them different forms of the same word) but I’m feeling motivated. I’m giving my reading and listening an extra push
