Spanish teacher Agnieszka Figlewicz had a great idea that she shared on Facebook, which I have modified a bit and will try out with my English Language Learner students, though I don’t know if there is enough time left in this school year.  It might have to wait.

Basically, it’s asking students to put small portions of their writing (probably a sentence or two) into ChatGPT, Bard, or Poe (I’m using Poe in the above image) and preceding it with instructions like this:

If this sentence is written correctly, tell me so. If it is not, rewrite the sentence correctly and explain any errors very simply in Spanish [or whatever is the student’s home language]:

I put in “explain any errors very simply” because I found it tended to go on too extensively and would obviously lose the student.  I’m thinking about “small portions” of their writing for similar reasons.

Agnieszka’s idea is to have students do some writing like this for homework, and then have them share the thread from AI.

I like this idea a lot, and I also think it has potential for use in the actual classroom.  As she says, it has the potential to reduce student overuse of Google Translate.

Any suggestions on how to improve this idea?

I’m adding it to:

THE BEST IDEAS FOR USING GOOGLE TRANSLATE IN THE ELL CLASSROOM – PLEASE ADD YOUR OWN!

THE BEST POSTS ON EDUCATION & CHATGPT