How to learn a language
with ChatGPT or Claude

What a chat tutor is good at

• Explaining, in your own language. Why this tense and not that one. The difference between two words that your dictionary calls the same. It explains as many times as you need.
• Correcting your writing with reasons. Paste what you wrote and ask for the mistakes with the rule behind each one. A teacher marks; a chat marks and explains, at once.
• Conversation at your level, on anything. Your day, your job, a film. It waits while you type, and it does not get bored.
• Reading help. Paste a paragraph you half understood and ask for the hard words, or for the same text one level down.
• Examples from your life. Ask for sentences about your kitchen, your office or your city. An example you can picture is one you remember.

What it does badly, and what to do about it

• It forgets. A new chat starts from zero. The memory settings in ChatGPT and Claude keep a few facts about you, not the forty words you met this week, and nothing in a chat brings a word back on the day you are about to forget it. Keep the words somewhere else (below).
• It agrees too easily. Ask “is this right?” and you often hear yes. Ask instead “what would a native speaker say, and what sounds odd in mine?”, and tell it once, at the start, to correct every mistake.
• It is thinner in smaller languages. There is far more training text in English, Spanish or German than in most of the world’s languages, so the odd invented word or false idiom is more likely there. Check a word you have never seen in a dictionary before you keep it. (Lexpad’s own AI cards have the same limit: strongest in widely used languages.)
• It is not a listening teacher. Voice mode is one voice at one speed. Real listening comes from real speakers: YouTube, a series, podcasts, people.
• It will not make you speak to a person. At some point you need one. The chat is where you prepare and where you fix what went wrong afterwards.

Set it up once

Both apps let you keep a standing instruction, so you do not type your rules every day: ChatGPT’s custom instructions or a project, Claude’s projects. Put something like this there, in your own words:

Not sure of your level? What the CEFR levels mean for words helps you pick one. Change the rules when they stop fitting; a learner at B2 wants fewer corrections and harder questions than one at A2.

A 20-minute routine

1. Minutes 0 to 3, yesterday’s words. Ask for a quick quiz on the words you kept yesterday, from your notebook, not from the chat’s memory. Say the answers before you read them.
2. Minutes 3 to 12, talk. In the language, about something that happened today. Write in full sentences, even bad ones. Let it correct you in one line each time and keep going.
3. Minutes 12 to 16, the mistakes. “Now list the mistakes I made in this chat, the worst three first, with the rule.” Write the three rules down in your own words.
4. Minutes 16 to 19, read one thing. A short text at your level, or a paragraph you met today, pasted in, with the hard words explained.
5. Minute 20, keep the words. Three to five from the whole session, each with the sentence it came in. Not more.

On a day with no time, do only the first and last steps. They keep what you already have.

Prompts that work

Write the way you would talk to a tutor, and say what you want back. These eight cover most of a week. Change the language, the level and the topic to yours.

Speaking by voice

Both apps can talk: you speak, it answers aloud. It is the easiest way to practise saying things when there is nobody to say them to. Use it for the conversation step, with the same standing rules, and ask for the corrections in writing afterwards so you can keep them.

Be honest with yourself about what it checks. It hears words. When it answers something you did not say, you have learned that a word of yours is not coming out clearly, which is useful. It is not a pronunciation coach, and a yes from it is not a native speaker’s yes.

Keep the words

This is the step most people skip, and it is why a month of good chats can leave almost nothing behind. The chat forgets; something else has to remember. Three ways:

• A notebook, on paper or in a notes app, with the word, the sentence and a date to look again. The vocabulary notebook guide says what to write.
• Anki. Ask the chat to write the words as a CSV file, one card per line, word, meaning and example, and import it. The schedule then lives in Anki.
• Lexpad, from inside the chat, below. You say “save that word” and it is in a notebook with a schedule, without leaving the conversation.

Keeping them with Lexpad

Made by the author of this page

Say “save that word” in the chat

• Lexpad is in ChatGPT’s Plugins Directory (add it, then type @Lexpad in a chat) and in Claude’s connector directory. You connect once, sign in on Lexpad’s own page and choose what the assistant may do; it never sees your password.
• Then, in any conversation: “Save reluctant to my Lexpad with the example about work.” The assistant writes the card, a meaning in your language and the example, and it lands in your notebook. The next day Lexpad brings it back; know it and it waits 1, 3, 7, then 21 days.
• Ask “what’s due in my Lexpad?” and it reads your due words and quizzes you in the chat. Each answer counts as practice, exactly as in the app, so the first three minutes of the routine happen where you already are.
• Something wrong with a card, or a wish for the app? Say so in the chat and ask the assistant to tell the Lexpad team; it sends your words only after you say yes. Ask it how Lexpad works and it answers from Lexpad’s own pages.
• Connecting Lexpad is free. On Free, ChatGPT and Claude write 10 cards a day. On Pro, chat cards are unlimited (up to 1,000 a day). Out of cards, words save without a meaning. Lexpad in ChatGPT and Claude, and the prompts that save and quiz words.

Open in LexpadAll downloads

Free account, no card. Apps: Mac · Windows · Android · iPhone

And inside Lexpad

Lexpad has a tutor of its own, Lex, with Pro. The difference from a general chat is where it starts: from the words you saved most recently, with their meanings and boxes in front of it. “Test me on my newest words” or “use my hardest words in a short story” needs no pasting. More about Lex.