There’s Actually One More Thing I Started Using AI For — Learning Languages. Why? Simply because I kept seeing all those ads about “online” tutors and decided to see how good it really is. Plus, there was one more thing I wanted to find out:
Is it actually better than learning from books?
The Beginning
At first, I was using AI mostly to check my grammar. Over time, this evolved into me always asking for a summary of what had been corrected, so I wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. However, this was for a language I already knew at least to some extent. But what about a language I had just started learning or always wanted to learn?
I didn’t know how to begin, so I asked Gemini for a two-month learning plan to reach a basic understanding of Japanese, a language I had studied a bit in the past. The plan I received had everything, it was divided into phases, each with core focus points, and included examples of books and apps.
There was even a schedule
Nice it even included rest days. The plan also set realistic expectations for what could be achieved in two months. So far, so good.
Learning prompts
I didn’t want to go to the external resources as mentioned at the start so I started prompting further
Give me a daily JLPT N5 Level grammar lesson.
What I got was quite satisfactory, short explanation of what is the topic of the lesson, followed by examples and even a quick practice session with answers at the end. Perfect, in my opinion.
I took it a step further, since I also wanted to stay in touch with the language daily not just learning grammar, but also picking up new vocabulary.
Give me a daily JLPT Grammar Quiz (N5 Level) composed of 5 question along with 10 new words to learn. When the words consist of kanji, give a meaning for each of them.
What I received exceeded my expectations: single-answer questions that were followed by solutions with explanations. In most cases, the AI even explained why the other options were incorrect.
After that came vocabulary and again, I had no complaints about the answers I received.
So I took it a step further. Since learning vocabulary is a process that requires repetition, I asked the AI to prepare a test for me after a few days.
Prepare me a test – 10 questions, from the vocabulary presented by you in this conversation.
It generated the test in the same format as the grammar ones: single-answer questions with solutions. I also checked for hallucinations, but in all three tests I reviewed, every word had been introduced earlier in the conversation. That led me to combine all the prompts into a single daily routine:
Give me a daily JLPT Grammar Quiz (N5 Level) composed of 5 question along with 10 new words to learn. When the words consist of kanji, give a meaning for each of them. After that also prepare me a test from the words provided earlier in this conversation.
This will probably work for a while. Keep in mind that conversations can’t go on forever at some point, they reset. So it might be a good idea to split grammar and vocabulary into separate threads. Still, I’ll test how far I can push it before it breaks. Maybe it won’t be an issue in my case. A possible workaround would be creating a custom “Gem” with files containing the vocabulary, but I’ll leave that for later.
The last two areas were listening and speaking. For listening, I initially thought I’d need an AI to read out the texts generated by Gemini. But I found an easier solution: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/ a site with short, simple news videos and transcripts. For now, I’ll use that to practice listening, since Gemini can’t generate voice clips. As for speaking, that turned out to be quite easy too. I asked:
Engage with in a JLPT N5 Level conversation. When I make a mistake also provide me a quick explanation what’s incorrect and the correct form.
You can, of course, personalize your “Gem” to follow a specific character, speaking style, or dialect but that’s something I’ll leave for another time.
Conclusion
To be honest, I started with the Genki I textbook, which I’ve had since my university days, to continue learning Japanese. However, I found that chatting with Gemini was more effective for me. It’s easily accessible through the Gemini app, so I can review or learn something new whenever I have my phone with me.
The only thing I couldn’t get to work in this setup was scheduled tasks. Apparently, the Gemini app can schedule tasks, even sending you emails with generated prompt responses but I haven’t managed to make that feature work yet.
