Episode Transcript
Ixchell Reyes
The DIESOL podcast

Brent Warner
Developing Innovation in English as a Second or Other Language.

Ixchell Reyes
Episode 76: The End of the World (As We Know It): ChatGPT with Eric H Roth.

Brent Warner
Welcome to DIESOL, this is episode 76. We are your hosts. I’m Brent Warner.

Ixchell Reyes
And I’m Ixchell Reyes. Hey, holy moly.

Brent Warner
End of the year.

Ixchell Reyes
End of the year!

Brent Warner
I know 2022 We’re at the end. And you’re in California!

Ixchell Reyes
I am in California. We’re on the same timeframe and I’m falling asleep. I’m not used to being up at this time. But happy to be in the hometown.

Brent Warner
Yeah, yeah. It’s nice. Wrapping up the semester getting done with everything. So I am looking forward to my break

Ixchell Reyes
Are you done grading?

Brent Warner
No, I got a little bit of work to do…

Ixchell Reyes
Are you writing essays?

Brent Warner
Yeah, we’ll talk about that…

Ixchell Reyes
Are you bringing them home? Are there five paragraph essays? (laughter)

Brent Warner
Yep. there are some of those. We got some some different things to sort here. So. So we’ll get into these. So all of these questions are coming from a little bit of the background on today’s topic. I think I think we’ll, we’ll start by-

Ixchell Reyes
We’ll dive right in.

Brent Warner
We will dive right in. We’ll start by diving in. Let’s jump over. Alright, so today’s guests we have finally, and this has been a long time coming.

Ixchell Reyes
We’ve been talking about this forever since episode one.

Brent Warner
Eric Roth! So Eric H Roth teaches students the pleasures and perils of academic writing and public speaking. He has taught numerous English and writing courses at USC since 2003, a former journalist and congressional aide Roth also directed the CES Adult Education Center from 1996 to 1999. And he received his MA in Media Studies from the New School University and his BA in philosophy from Wabash College. He’s taught in Spain, France and Vietnam and regularly presents at professional comp, conferences and conventions, TESOL, CATESOL, all the different ones traveled to over 40 countries. And he also co authored the fluency focus compelling conversation series, which I have some relationships with. So Eric, just to point out whatever it means, since we make zero money on this show, it doesn’t matter if we’re conflicting interests here. But I have done a little bit of work for for Eric and the Chimayo press, books and some things in there. So the latest one, I think, was creating compelling conversations from 2019. And Eric, you also served on the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant national selection committee, amongst other things, so you’re kind of you’ve done everything. Welcome to the show, Eric.

Eric H. Roth
Thank you!

Ixchell Reyes
Um, can I can I say something real quick? So I just want to say how I met Eric. And it’s when I first started working at USC, I was I was this newbie teacher and I attended a CATESOL conference. And I was thinking nobody here knows about technology. And I went to this session on using TED talks in the writing classroom for ESL students. And lo and behold, this is where I met Eric. And then my office happened to be across from Paris, and I had no idea and I kept hearing this voice and I kept thinking, I know that voice from somewhere. I know that voice from somewhere. So I like just trying not to be suspicious walk around the corner. I was like, Oh, my gosh!! (laughter) I had like this starstruck moment. And then it just turned out he was such a supporter of all of the ideas that I had. And so I am so happy that we have you on the show, okay, now.

Eric H. Roth
Thank you! It’s a real mutual admiration society. I appreciate both of your work. And you’ve created such a valuable podcast here for not only English teachers in the United States, but I think around the world. And last summer you both attended and presented at the virtual ELT Summit, which was based out of India, and your presentations were, you know, super hits there. And the vast majority of the English teachers there were from India in the surrounding countries. So you’ve really created something fantastic here.

Brent Warner
Yeah. (laughter) Not yeah, we’re great, but yes, that was a great was a great event too. (laughter)

Eric H. Roth
So I, you know, we’ve been talking about these issues of technology and how we can take advantage of this amazing technology. And sometimes it feels like the English teaching is far behind the technological possibilities, I think we’ve all struggled with how to bring some more innovative practices, into our classrooms and in different environments with different levels of support from administrators and, and institutions. And I think, you know, it’s up to the individual teachers often to find ways to to make it lively and dynamic for the students in the class. And, you know, whatever is happening in the field, writ large, we have to teach the students who are in front of us in our classes, and I think that’s really what the is so fantastic about this topic today. Because you can see where this technology can go in so many different directions. But if we just think in terms of audience context and purpose of the English students that we work with, and what their needs are, what their aspirations are, and what possibilities we can gain from this technology, I think it’d be useful. I hope that we don’t all fall into the fear first default. And let me just casually go a couple of back steps on that. I was one of those people that was very ambivalent about first introducing turn it in so many, many moons ago. Because the way it was presented to me was this was plagiarism detection. And so if it was plagiarism detection, and then all the students were being required to submit their papers automatically, it felt to me like it was guilty until proven innocent. And I just didn’t want that spirit in the in the classroom. And so for a number of years, I was kind of, you know, hesitant and, and how to do it. And I would only submit it, if I had reason to suspect the paper was not clean. But the technology did get better and more advanced and more sophisticated. And then it added, I think a big jump was when they added the ETS features so that they could look at the style rubrics, and they could look at the grammar. And then you could have students submitted not only for similarities, but you could have them submitted. So they had a chance to look at how the Educational Testing Service, standardized rubrics worked, and how they’re some it’s not perfect, it’s ever been perfect, it won’t necessarily be perfect. But it was very interesting for students to see that there was something in the sentence that didn’t work. And maybe it wasn’t a missing article. But there was something in that sentence that didn’t work. And, of course, the technology is both marvelous, and sometimes mysterious, and but sometimes it’s kind of mindless, too. And so it doesn’t know whether the cat ate the house or the cat was in the house, there’s no distinction there. There’s no meaning in it. But it’s very good in structure. And so that it really was useful and letting students submit multiple versions until the due date. And I would even say, you know, maybe you made a mistake, and you submitted the rough draft. And that was that wasn’t clean. That 87% similarity. But but you know, I think that you can you can take something out of compliance, and then make it more creative and more useful and more educational. And I’m hoping that we don’t just look at this as, oh, people are going to use it to write emails to professors, instead of writing their own emails. And I’m not sure that’s a bad thing if it leads to clearer communication between the student and the professor. And then we don’t have to have back and forth just seeking out clarity about the details.

Brent Warner
Well, let’s, let’s clarify a little bit here too, because I think all of this conversation kind of comes together in one part. So first, I think there might still be many people listening that that haven’t caught up with the chatGPT conversation yet. And so, I want to step back too, for just a second because when we started talking and doing the show, well before we started doing this, and part of the reason the three of us, you know, have had such good conversations in the past is because we’ve always had fun and you know opportunities to play with, with tech in ways to support students and to give them chances to build their own autonomy. But also, I have to say that today looking at that, it almost feels like those were like, trinkets in certain ways. Like, it’s like, oh, okay, that was like a fun little toy that we played with right? And I’m not not trying to discount the learning that students got out of all the things that we’ve talked about in the past. All of those things are very real. However, I, it kind of feels like, you know, like watching your child grow up, and then all of a sudden you turn around on one day, it’s like, whoa, wait a second, what happened to you being the child? Now you–

Ixchell Reyes
It all just accelerated in the last.. every you know, everything accelerates–

Brent Warner
Well, I mean, literally overnight here, like there was the weekend, two weekends ago, this was announced and came out and just exploded. So before we we get too, too far into the conversation, and today’s a little different, because we’re just chatting through possibilities, right? We’re just we’re just kind of it’s a little bit more of a philosophical show today, then, that it might have been in other times, but Ixchell, I’m hoping that you might read this definition that you found of chatGPT.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah. So chatGPT is described by real clear education.com As a new artificial intelligence tool from open AI, as simple to use as a search engine, but can generate almost any text on command in response to a user prompt. And one of the things that has happened is that users have already discovered that it can compose new songs, write essays, take tests, and just the multitude of things. And so that, yeah, it’s it’s the implications. And what it can do is just, it blows your mind once you start going down the rabbit hole, because it’s a rabbit hole.

Brent Warner
So I’m gonna pause it there just because I want to, I want to read a sample or two of some of the texts that is generated, just for the people who haven’t played with it or haven’t looked at it at all can kind of get a sense, right? So these are kind of silly ones, but I like these because because they are they capture tone a little bit. And so

Ixchell Reyes
Brent, so chatGPT is something where a user will go in, they will type something in into a field text field. Right?

Brent Warner
Right.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah. And then something will be generated and you’re about to read that

Brent Warner
Correct. So they type in a prompt of whatever they’re trying to look for. And then then it will create something. So this is these are a couple of fun samples from Ben Zimmer, and they are fun. But the reason I like these ones is because of the tone that they capture, right? Not just that they write an essay well, but that they are able to catch different types of tones and styles of writing. So so the first one that he wrote in here was write a history of crosswords in the style of a conspiracy theorist. I’m not going to read the whole thing, but I’ll read one paragraph out of the middle of it. It said in December of 1913, when unveiled his latest creation, the word crossword puzzle, it was published in the Sunday edition of the New York World and it quickly became a sensation. But all was not as it seemed, hidden within the puzzle, were subliminal messages designed to brainwash the unsuspecting public, public. And it kind of keeps on going. Yeah, and it’s like that tone to be able to capture which is like, and you know, the there are these patterns to writing that can that can keep people’s attention. The next one, I’ll just share one more of his that he made and said, Tell me about autumns razor but get increasingly cranky. And so this one is just amazing. So he said, So it starts off fine. I’ll tell you about outcomes razor, but I’m warning you I’m not happy about it. The next paragraph says outcomes razor is a principle in philosophy and science that states that given a choice between two explanations for a phenomenon, the simpler one is usually the correct one. In other words, when faced with two possible explanations for something, the one that makes the fewest assumptions is most likely to be true, fairly standard. Now look at what goes in the next sentence. Now, I don’t know about you, but I find this whole concept to be ridiculous. Why should we always go with the simplest explanation? Sometimes the truth is more complicated than that. And why do we have to shave off all the unnecessary details like we’re trimming a beard is just silly. If you asked me and it goes on and it gets more and more. So this is kind of you can go in and make these things right now. Eric, I know that you before we were chatting, you probably spent a couple of hours just creating your own prompts and playing with things and making it See are just seeing what it comes up with for its own responses. And so we want to kind of talk about some of those ideas, some of the things that this is coming up with. I do want to point out just very briefly, and we’ll, I’ll put a link to it in the show notes as well. But there is a linguist Professor up in the University of Washington, and she did a an interview, and she wanted to make it quite clear that chat GPT is not AI, it is a language model. And the way that it builds is based on processing the the next possible logical step of what would what would come in the language. So it’s not thinking for itself, right. Like they’re trying to say a lot of people are saying it’s AI, it’s automatically intelligent. And it’s not thinking for itself. My concern with the way that she presented that information is, yes, that’s true. But what are the consumers? What are the people read? Understanding, right, because there are two parts to that. So Eric, I know you have some thoughts on this. And I would love to hear what your experiences have been so far.

Eric H. Roth
Well, I first thing I did was I was just kind of puzzled. I’ve been following AI for a number of years. And, you know, I teach with a lot of graduate students in computer science, and we’re seeing a quantum leap in possibilities. Let me start with an example from the former world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, who might have been the first prominent personality to essentially lose his job and title to a computer and his AI. And he talked about how when he was a young man, he knew dozens of phone numbers, but now he doesn’t know the phone numbers of his best friends, because it’s all taking his outsource that to his phone, his smartphone. But it’s opened up a lot of other brain space for other things. And he doesn’t mind outsourcing. Phone numbers. i The question that we we do the similar thing when we do Christmas cards, and a lot of us have our mailing addresses right now on list and we don’t memorize those addresses anymore. But it’s gotten, we’ve gotten used to Google Mail sending us you know, three possible responses in email, and choosing one and I always try to modify it a little bit. So even if I’m just saying thank you, I’ll say thank you, Brent. Thank you, Ixchell. But we’ve slowly gotten more and more accustomed to this assistance, and Grammarly just kind of took that to another level. And before we were talking about, turn it in, I didn’t know what to expect, after all the hype, and sometimes the hype far exceeds the reality. So when I started playing around with it, first thing I did, was put in requests for short essays on topics that my students wrote this semester, that I didn’t know much about. And one of the I teach at USC, University of Southern California, and I teach mostly graduate students in a variety of different disciplines. And so the pleasure of the classes, one of the pleasures of the class is that we all kind of were students, and we’re learning from each other. And people are specialists, and you’re speaking to non specialists in the class. So as a traditional writing class, it’s a wonderful environment. Because as you’ve become more and more of a micro specialist, you’ll have a chance to describe key definitions and important concepts to us. And the research trends that you’re following and why you’re why you’re interested in us. But it also makes it difficult sometimes to follow. So on, I put it, what some of the topics for my students, one of them was the status of Ottoman Catholics in the army, excuse me, Armenian Catholics in the Ottoman Empire in the 18th and 19th and early 20th century, something I know nothing about. student knows a lot about they’re getting a doctorate in it, and pretty and they gave a really nice cogent response in like 20 seconds. And that’s, that’s kind of interesting. Likewise, the ability I put in one on the metaverse and a student from communications program on wants to work for a luxury brand, and the new markets and the metaverse I don’t even really know what they mean. And so I put in luxury brands, can you tell me about the potential for luxury brands and And then reverse and got it in response and again, like 20 seconds, a very cogent 400 word response. So it is a, I think it’s going to be too tempting for high school students who may be feeling less confidence and less interest in, in a standard subject to resist the temptation of rushing off to this technology. And being it outsourced, just like we outsource phone numbers to our smartphones, I think a lot of high school students who don’t see themselves as scholars are going to be be very tempted by this. And if we only use a compliance model, then I think we’re gonna get, we’re going to quickly find ourselves overwhelmed, and being very frustrated and feel like maybe it’s the end of the world. But I don’t think that’s the only way we can view this, I think we can use it. And what I’d like to talk to both of you about are different ways that we can take our current assignments or create new assignments, as English teachers, that encourage our students to play in and toy around with this new technology, create stronger essays, stronger research papers, build their curiosity and become stronger writers in critical thinkers. And I do think that we’re going to need to put more focus on asking better questions, more powerful questions, more precise questions, and also asking for higher standards of proof. So just the fact that it’s said by someone, well, who says and we all know the trope of, you know, some say, Well, who are these some people? Or they say, Who are these they, you know, so we’re gonna have to really descend in the details, and get people to cite their sources. And include, I think, more visual, more infographics, and to write commentary, and not just show us the graph, but explain the graph, in detail.

Brent Warner
And also, here’s a hint to MLA and APA, you guys need to really update the way that you are asking us to cite information because it is awful. It’s been so awful forever. And there’s no way like, Okay, I mean, that’s a tangent. Tangent, but come on, you guys. Like why can’t we just have a hyperlink inside of a Google doc like to the whatever the source is? Why do I need to write all these other crazy anyways, so it’s gonna be it’s a Yeah, so I agree. All of these parts here are things for us to consider. I want to kind of go into two parts. So I know earlier, Eric, you said, Let’s not lead with the fear. But I want to lead with the fear. (laughter)

Ixchell Reyes
I mean, it is the end of the world.

Brent Warner
So that we can also that we can end actually, your job.

Eric H. Roth
You get to play but you’ll be a peasant! Amazing technology. The world itself might literally end, too as machines take over.

Brent Warner
Have you seen Terminator? Because this is this is a predictive movie, as we all know.

Eric H. Roth
You heard it first on DIESOL (laughter)

Brent Warner
The title says it all! But no, the reason why I really want to start with that is because I also want to end on the positive note, and I want I want people to kind of walk away with with some opportunities and things. But I think it would be disingenuous for us not to talk about the things that are concerns here and that a lot of people are worried about with all of these as well. So we can get into a few things. I think the very first thing that’s showing up for most, yeah, right off the bat.

Ixchell Reyes
But I can imagine some of my colleagues, many of my colleagues,

Brent Warner
what are they saying?

Ixchell Reyes
Cheating! Plagiarism! Now how are we gonna catch them out? It’s gonna make my job harder. Well, yes…

Eric H. Roth
But here’s the thing you know, like, the cheating is absolutely the unmotivated student who doesn’t feel inspired, has never had a better opportunity to cheat in 10 seconds if they didn’t have the homework ready for the nine o’clock class. They can start at 830 and they will have their cheat they’ll have their cheated- their paper full of you know, an original work will be ready

Brent Warner
Oh yeah, with enough time for a latte. (laughter)

Eric H. Roth
In 20 seconds, they’re gonna be able to create a paper if they want to do that.

Ixchell Reyes
And you know, let’s to the to the new generation, the younger generation, this is just a matter of efficiency, actually, I mean, for them, it’s why should I if I can get this much quicker, why not? And so I think that just the approach to how we assess writing and what we consider acceptable work is just has to be reframed completely, I think just revamped. Another one of the other concerns along those lines is what’s going to happen to our five paragraph model? And formulaic writing.

Brent Warner
Yeah

Eric H. Roth
They’re, like, I don’t know how your program does your assessment right now. But it USC, the the we have a written test is essentially a five paragraph essay model. And many students have been trained on how to write these already for a long time. So there’s already many problems if you teach and expect formulaic writing already, it is just a short step to let me outsource it, you’re training me to sound like a computer, why not have a computer write the essay to? But I do think there’s a response to that, and a challenge that we can walk away. I don’t think we have to give up on that.

Brent Warner
Well, let’s, let’s grab that in a second. Because I think part of this is John Warner, who wrote the book, why they can’t write and he’s done some other some other great stuff. He he wrote a thread on this too. And he was really talking about this same idea, which he did break down in that book, but he said, you know, a fairly long thread, but I’m just gonna pull out one or two of the the ideas that I liked what she said, one of the worst effects of the standardization of writing and writing assessment is that it has destroyed student attitudes towards writing, and even school in general, they do not see writing as a vehicle for discovery, learning and communication. Right, and then it kind of goes on from there. But Eric, I’d love to hear what you think so and we can, you know, certainly conversations around the problem with the five paragraph essay, but I think this is almost to the point for me where I’m saying like, this is disrupting writing, right? Like all like, so many people are not going to see the need to write when they just say, hey, I can get the idea out here done well, and I don’t need to put in the effort into it. Now, we can go in two different directions with that, right? Of course, we can say, Well, hey, that’s true. And that’s the same reason that people play Guitar Hero, right? Like, it’s like, I feel like I’m a musician, but it really, I’m just tapping a couple buttons. And I’m not doing I’m not really building any skills on this video game, right. On the other hand, Ixchell, I think I did several weeks or months ago, the one of my picks was this Yousician thing, which is essentially the same thing. But you are building a skill of playing a real musical instrument while you’re playing this video game, right? So I’m actually I do this, I’m playing guitar, I’m getting these notes. And I’m learning, you know, at my own pace, and I’m stepping away from it and jumping back into it, but I am getting some like, like actual music training and learning as I’m going through this because I’m personally interested in doing that. Right. And so I’m interested in this gap.

Ixchell Reyes
You’re saying that towards like, chatG… oh, my gosh, I can’t think

Brent Warner
ChatGPT

Ixchell Reyes
I was gonna say GTP GPT can be used as a tool to teach you the skill, rather than

Brent Warner
I think so.

Eric H. Roth
Absolutely. Absolutely

Brent Warner
I think. Yeah. I think that’s the conversation that we’re going to need to open up in our field as people start to become aware of this, right?

Ixchell Reyes
Oh, If we discount it, we’re only shooting ourselves in the foot, right? Where it’s gonna be that fight of that we had with cell phones that we had with internet that we had, it’s not going away. Yes. The more you resist, the bigger the gap, the gap.

Eric H. Roth
And I’ll give you an example. Many of us know, how did Purdue University which started off as an agricultural university, public land grant, focused mostly on engineering, how did they create the most popular online writing website? The Online Writing Lab, and they did that because their computer science engineers as soon as they the internet opened up said, Hey, we could take all these worksheets that we have at the Writing Center, make it accessible to everyone in the community, and some people who are off in the community are interested in how to improve their writing. into or go to other universities, and they can have access for free to our our materials. Meanwhile, University of Chicago, Harvard University, Georgetown, Ivy League schools and USC, all were like debating, set it up, set up academic committees and took five years to figure out what the policy should be in terms of showing University produced materials for their students to the larger internet. And by that time, five years later, the footprint had been taken over by Purdue University. So they we have a long history of academia moving really very, very slow, in almost immediate evil, bureaucratic manner, in response to rapid, almost revolutionary speed technologies. And so they’re so often far far behind. So I think that there are, you know, students are going to pick up on it much faster than administrators are going to approve responses. But as, as classroom teachers, we can respond as quickly as the students to

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, we’re on the frontlines of it, we’re the ones that closest to the writing, the students are the ones doing the writing or assessing the writing, and someone up above is the one that’s deciding on these tools, right, or how to approach these tools.

Eric H. Roth
And there are a lot of creative things that we can do. Well, one thing I pitched for the first time explicitly this semester, was that I will in using the Kasparov example, I’m going to outsource my phone numbers, but I’m not willing to outsource my emotions, my thinking, my experiences, my reflections on my experiences to someone else, let alone and anonymous collection of, you know, individuals or machines. So you know, if we can call upon students to look at their own experiences. So I like things like writing bio statements about your own life, because you’re the world’s leading expert on that, I do want you to recognize the you’re contributing to a Google resume. And I want you to combine objective facts. While you create self propaganda. For yourself, too. I want you to do things like I like consumer reviews. And I know some people think that you’re just teaching people to being consumers and not citizens. There’s a whole discussion on that, I would just note that the quality of life in many countries that that do not allow consumers. And we’ve had a few of those experiments in the last 100 years, did not do a very good job of treating them as citizens either. But anyway, with consumer reviews are accessible. So whether it’s a restaurant review, or whether it’s sharing food recipes, or whether it’s writing product reviews, or whether it’s writing movie reviews, those are accessible. And I think that we can build in things like tell us your favorite scene, and remind them about their experiences as physical entities and their sensations, not just their experiences, but also their feelings. And reflecting on that, I think that will help. And we can build critical thinking with that framework, too. Yeah. So that’s one answer, I think is is Don’t you know, it’s not, you don’t have to distrust yourself, or discount your experiences. You can be proud enough of your own life and your own experiences to share those. And then we can work on the language and just, you know, writing more than the writing will improve. That’s what I’d like to do. Yeah. So they don’t feel so quick to jump to some experts. Because there’s also the whole myth that the AI generated text is going to be more like, you know, God, like it’s going to be the authoritative answer. It’s going to be like the the encyclopedias spoken, but it’s through a machine. And sometimes people are very, very deferential to that kind of voice of God narrative. And I think you want to call them back to their own experience as much as possible.

Brent Warner
Yeah. So I think – go ahead

Ixchell Reyes
I think – I know, I was going to say, a thought just popped into my head as we’re having this conversation. What is this kind of tool going to do for like, for example, that any of you type in, speak in the voice or write in the voice of an immigrant from Europe? Like, what’s that going to look like? And who’s going to decide what that looks like for the AI. And so now, you’re talking about writing and having these experiences are big contribution contributions of the students have their own experiences. And writing is an extension of who you are. Right? So if you’re writing a consumer review, that’s your voice. There’s some power there to those words. The more we’re relying on other tools to do that, the more distant we are and disconnected we are from what that is, because it’s no longer really ours. Sorry.

Eric H. Roth
No, that’s great. I love that Ixchell. And you know, one of the things that’s nice about the consumer reviews and the restaurant reviews, is that when they won the first step of that I have them read like 10, Yelp reviews of other people, and then introduces slang, and they get a sense of different personalities. Then when they write their review, on not only do they get the positive feedback from the classmates that they know, and the teacher that they know, but they get start to get feedback from total strangers. And that’s got a lot of real power of authenticity that in English, they were able to communicate well enough that they were able to get positive feedback in terms of likes and such things from total strangers. Yeah. So I think that’s really nice, too. And it is kind of putting on different selves and different personalities.

Brent Warner
Well, that’s what we’ve talked about in the past, Eric, too, is these conversations around like, Well, why are we having them blog publicly instead of inside of Canvas? Right? Why are we having them make a podcast that gets that gets pushed out there, instead of just sending a recording and dropping it in Google Drive somewhere, because when people know that there’s an audience, they’re more connected to their own their own work, and they want their quality to be shown there, right? So believe it or not, we’re already getting, like, we’re already over the halfway mark here. And we were running out of — running low on time.

Ixchell Reyes
(laughter) There’s just so much to talk about

Brent Warner
I know, this is the problem. It’s impossible, we could go on forever to talk about this. And so there are going to be many, many, many, many, many think pieces coming out on this topic, over the next months, but, but I do want to make sure that we spend some time talking about the pros and the possibilities that we can come up with more with utilizing and recognizing what this technology does, and not just sticking our head in a hole in the sand. And kind of saying, Well, I’m just either going to either say someone who’s using it as cheating, or, or I’m going to sit there and make them write everything inside of class. And I’m going to watch every word that they right. Because then I mean, what am I getting paid for it to be? To be a proctor the whole time? Right? I don’t want that either. I mean, I do like in class writing time, of course. Right. But I also, I want to shift this. Yeah, I want to shift this to a conversation of possibilities and ways that we can again, when we’re talking about language acquisition, when we’re talking about, you know, students who are studying English for whatever their goals are in life, then how do we say like, Hey, let’s recognize that this technology exists. And I am gonna say like, there are parts of me, that’s very, you know, like, hey, there are parts, we will lose students in the ESL field, there are going to be students who do they’re gonna say, I don’t need —

Eric H. Roth
We’re gonna lose teachers, we’re gonna lose programs. Yeah, we’re gonna you know, there may be University English departments are going to lose even more majors. You know, business writing programs are going to take a hit. Because the argument you know, it’s no longer a skill that you need to learn as much as a skill that you can just deploy, if it’s just a rough draft. But if we can see that you need to use critical reason, and ask better questions and then verify information and edit and incorporate in part of the research process, then I think we’ve got a shot. And what I’d like to do is incorporate this as a first draft. So sometimes on in research projects, I asked students to first look at Wikipedia, and it’s a place to start a conversation, not ended conversation, but it does show a certain structure. It does give links primary links at the bottom. It introduces the in a broad overview you And then you can evaluate not just some reason we’ve talked before, about how good some of the summary writing software is out there. So we had to add an evaluation element. So I think we’ve talked before about using an entity bibliography for research papers and why I like doing that. Because you can see the building process, you can see how the paper is constructed, you can reverse engineer their thought process. And you can follow along, if you’re unfamiliar with the topic, as I’m often unfamiliar with the topic. So I think that this, this is a wonderful tool for doing that, too. And I’m thinking, maybe next semester, I’ll have one assignment, where I’ll ask them to ask a question in good in the response, and then evaluate, summarize and evaluate the response as one of their 10 sources for a research paper.

Brent Warner
Yeah, I like that. A lot. Actually, Eric, because that’s a great way to get started is you can take that right. And then especially if you’re getting, I like, well, in particular, because of your classes, I know that you’re able to really work with lots of different specialized content, because, excuse me, because you’re working towards what the students already know. But I do love the idea where if you say, Hey, you’re already an expert on this, what do you think about what this thing is saying? And what would you have changed? What would you have updated? What parts would you have removed? Right? And you can ask for even specific numbers, right? What are the two things that you would remove from this? What are what are three things that you would have added to this, if you were able to, you know, make sure that there’s an important point inside of here, right? And so with the recognition that the language in here is not AI, but it’s pulling from the model, right? And so you’re saying it’s not a brain, and they’re doing that it’s, it’s pulling from a database that is so vast that it feels like a brain.

Eric H. Roth
And it’s also biased, by the way, I mean, the thing is, you want to know what the underlying material is. And depending on that selection criteria, and we’ve all read articles on what happens with the AI visual program, if you put in different, you know, the different genders and different ages, you get very different responses to your own photos that you’re uploading. Same thing with the tax. So I think that if if they come back, if you put in a question like how can AI writing software improve US public education? You know, and that’s a question I asked, and it gave me five answers. And then if you could ask them to find evidence for those five, or examples, or do you agree, disagree? Why substantiate engage, start with it, instead of dismissing it, you’re also indicating that you are aware of the tool and so that you’re not some dopey out of touch Luddite? Who can be fooled, because they’re gonna go do it. And I’m, you know, I think that by introducing it in the very beginning, you’re indicating that you’re certainly going to be checking this in, in addition, so I think there are some real opportunities for this, some real opportunities. Yeah,

Brent Warner
I really like a lot of those possibilities, too. Here. We are getting close to time. So let’s, let’s each grab one, one more thing that we think we can do as a possibility. And I remember for everyone listening, we’re really just barely cracking this conversation open. It is so deep, and there’s so many parts. And I know there’s people listening right now they’re saying, Why are you talking about this? What about, what about this exception? We don’t know everything, right? This is all brand new. And so we’re, you know, even though people like us have been talking about these kinds of concepts, it doesn’t become real until it until it, you know, shows up in front of us. And we’re like, oh, this is what it’s actually like. So I have been kind of slowly telling people about this stuff over the years, but I didn’t expect to wake up one morning, and it’s all here right now. I thought it was gonna come slowly. bits and pieces. So but like I said, we are running a little bit out of time. So. So Eric, you’ve got you’ve shown us a couple of things. But let’s grab one more way that that you think you might use this as a you think you see some possibilities with this?

Eric H. Roth
Yeah, I think it highlights that what they can bring to the table is their own experiences. So that we it’s valid to have more of a first person voice. If it’s a movie review, if it’s a restaurant review, a product review, or other first person kind of writing and then that’s Same kind of critical thinking, where you ask for particular experiences, and evaluation, one to 10 or whatever, then when you’re doing longer research in the third person, then I think we incorporated in the process itself. And just the focus on asking more concise, clear questions. And if you want to ask a question, you can do it in the style of a cynic, or in the style of a particular writer, or in a particular era, I think it’ll be interesting. Incorporated, don’t hide from it, and teach them to use it. And then the need for editing and revising and proving bold assertions.

Brent Warner
Alright, Ixchell, what’s an idea you have?

Ixchell Reyes
I’m thinking of, in places where it’s English, for specific purposes where the students are not going to be responsible for, they’re not going to have time to, first of all, learn how to write and time is limited, but they’re still going to have to communicate in writing. And this may be in their nursing field, it could be in the military field, and many other areas, but if they’re able to take what AI can give them, and now they’re able to apply it to a variety, a wide audience, they can learn from it, and at a much faster pace without having to take time to have lessons and I think that would be efficient and save money. And I know that English is a business. So if we can get English for specific purpose students to to get to their field faster, and still communicate effectively, I think that that’s going to save time. And actually, again, like Eric said, if it can communicate? Clearly, I don’t see why not yet.

Brent Warner
Okay, so I’m gonna say one, that’s just a slightly different take on this, which is, I’d like to, I’m going to think I’m next semester, I will do this, where I’m going to challenge my students to write something by themselves, and then put it in and ask chat GPT to clean up their language. And then have them give me a compare and contrast. What are they seeing between their their original version versus ChatGPT’s cleaned up version? And what are some of the lessons that they’re learning, especially things that they’re seeing multiple changes of? So then a student would have to go back and maybe highlight, okay, this is what changed from version one, this is what changed in version two. And then they could talk through and discover through looking at that, and so maybe it’s not telling them, Hey, this is the wrong Subject, Verb Agreement, but they could see like, this keeps showing up as this weird little thing with s and without an S. So maybe I need to go and figure that thing out. And then it’s a self discovery opportunity

Ixchell Reyes
Look at that! Autonomous learning!

Brent Warner
yeah, instead of instead of another way around to it. And, and also, by the way, I spent a long time pointing those things out in their papers. And so now I can turn that around and say like, Hey, you should be using this to figure this out and showing, showing what you actually understand from these changes and then it will become a more ingrained and hopefully more permanent learning for them. Instead of just clicking the Grammarly suggestion, click Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It’s like well,

Ixchell Reyes
are accepting the teachers suggestions, which is why we spent so much time the first introductory essay talking to them about drafts and showing them different drafts and the author’s first draft and what what death of a moth look like. And so, yeah,

Eric H. Roth
Can I just say one other thing, I think is really exciting. From an American education point of view, but a global education point of view, is the possibility of more open education resources. This could make it very possible if you have a team of teachers in a rural community, on a low income community, and they want to create, they have an idea for a textbook, they could conceivably create that textbook with far less labor. And it can be tailored for their particular students. I can imagine some amazing creative options there. Now, it’s not good for by the way, small publishers writ large, probably not good for large publishing industry. But it may be wonderful for a lot of creative educators and for students in being able to get materials that match their life experience and their lived environments. And that’s wonderful. Yeah.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah

Eric H. Roth
There are so many possibilities there.

Ixchell Reyes
We’re gonna have to revisit this and and in the following year and see where a couple of months with this takes us because I one year I just don’t know what we’re gonna be it’s

Brent Warner
It’s gonna be so different it’s gonna…

Eric H. Roth
I don’t know where we’re gonna be in six weeks

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, right?

Eric H. Roth
I am re– I’ve taught the same class for four years and I’m each semester I modified a little bit but in the spring of 2023 I have to add new elements to all of my assignments now. Yeah.

Brent Warner
Well, this is we’d love to hear from everyone out there listening what your thoughts your experiences with these things are so hit us up.

Ixchell Reyes
Fears, concerns, all of it! Let’s have a conversation

Brent Warner
yeah, there’s gonna be so many. This is someone someone had mentioned to me, they said, it’s like, it’s gonna be like, going through the stages of grief. You know, like, there’s gonna be all because (laughter) it’s just so different, right? There’s so many changes that are coming to things

Eric H. Roth
Possibilities! Possibilities!

Brent Warner
Well, death, death opens up possibilities too, Eric. (laughter)

Ixchell Reyes
A metamorphosis of writing.

Brent Warner
With that, we’re gonna jump out.

Ixchell Reyes
All right, it is time for our fun finds. And is it time for our fun find? It is. Right? Okay. Today, I actually went with tech and I have an an app called MD clock. And MD clock is a widget app. So you can take you can I have like this little cat that pops up next to the time. It’s just one stuff. And then you have if you’d like to customize your clocks, there’s one where it can remind you to drink water, it can remind you of your daily habits that you want occur bad habits or good habits. It’s just a fun techy thing.

Brent Warner
So MD clock

Ixchell Reyes
a paid app. There’s a free version, but but I paid for it because it was so cute. So the clock widget app.

Brent Warner
Nice. So mine is a snack. Ritz crackers. I’m sure everybody’s had Ritz crackers with, you know, like a little chocolate spread on top of it. So

Ixchell Reyes
No…

Brent Warner
Oh, Ritz actually made these ones they’re fudge dipped,

Ixchell Reyes
oh my gosh.

Brent Warner
Like they’re they’re fudge dipped Ritz crackers, and we found them. I have to tell you how crazy this is because my wife went crazy for him. And she doesn’t even like chocolate. But she’s like, Okay, let’s go find them. And so we started driving all around Costa Mesa to all the different stores and we couldn’t find them anywhere except for this one stater brothers. Anyways, they are very nice. You know, I mean, the chocolate in the salty and like the combination is quite good, right? Like a soft, crispy. Yeah, so so we did, we did read the entire supply at our local brothers, we walked out with like six or eight boxes, took everything off the shelf. So they’re all about Christmas tree. If you want more you can you can try and find them online. But But Ritz fudge covered crackers. It also says Limited Edition right on the box. And so we’re like, Okay, grab as many as we can. And you guys can think about me while I’m eating them. Alright, so, Eric, do you have a fun find?

Eric H. Roth
Well, I love podcasts. And one of them is the rest is history. We’ve been following the World Cup. And the World Cup is a chance to learn a little bit more about a lot of different countries around the world and see some exciting games.

Brent Warner
So sad to see Croatia fall out, but but yes.

Eric H. Roth
So the rest is history is a podcast hosted by two British historians. And they’ve been taking a little known stories about historic events from all the countries involved in the last round of the World Cup. So that’s been really interesting, from Denmark and Spain and Morocco. And it’s just I’ve learned so much. So I recommend it. So like in Argentina, there’s a Welsh colony who knew there was a Welsh colony in Argentina, or, you know, in Senegal, there’s a door of no return and kind of a look at some, you know, summer history there or in you know, Belgian they looked at a famous artist and it’s just, it’s nice. It’s interesting how many of us have had a chance to work and travel around the world and it’s a nice addition.

Brent Warner
I like that. Nice.

Ixchell Reyes
I’m gonna have to add it to my list. Alright, if you’re giving us a shout out in any way else on social media, we’ll have everything, all the resources in the show notes. We’re on Patreon. And for the show notes and other episodes you can check out (laughter) sorry, Brent!

Brent Warner
You’re stealing my lines! (laughter) It’s the end of the year, take it over, run and run with it.

Ixchell Reyes
For the show notes and other episodes, check out DIESOL.org/76 or you can listen to us at voiceed.ca. You can also find us on Twitter. You can find the show at @DIESOLpod.

Brent Warner
Oh, you can find me at IXY underscore pixie.

Ixchell Reyes
(laughter) You can find me at @BrentGWarner

Brent Warner
All right. We’re going crazy. We’re going stir crazy at the end here, Eric.

Eric H. Roth
Compelling talks.

Brent Warner
All right. Eric, any other places people can find you think I mean? You have all these? You know, these wonderful books and all of these resources? I mean, we’re having a totally different conversation.

Eric H. Roth
Yeah. compellingconversations.com you can find a lot of free sample chapters and always interested in feedback.

Brent Warner
Yeah, yeah.

Eric H. Roth
Thank you.

Brent Warner
Thank you.

Eric H. Roth
In Tajik thank you is Rahmat. Rahmat for tuning in to the DIESOL podcast.

Brent Warner
Good night, everybody.

Ixchell Reyes
Happy New Year.

Brent Warner
See you in 2023.

A couple of weeks ago, ChatGPT exploded onto the scene, and teachers across the globe are scrambling to understand how this automated writing technology will affect every aspect of their teaching, pedagogy, and careers. While nobody has the answers, it’s important to open up the conversation and make sure ESOL Teachers have an idea of what they’re stepping into. This open conversation with Professor Eric H Roth explores the perils and potential of AI and automated writing in the classroom. Listen in today, and please let us know how you’ll be approaching this shift in the paradigm of teaching.

Featured Guest: Eric H Roth

Eric H Roth teaches students the pleasures and perils of academic writing and public speaking. He has taught numerous English and writing courses at USC since 2003. A former journalist and Congressional aide, Roth also directed the CES Adult Education Center from 1996-1999.  Roth received his MA in Media Studies from The New School University, and his B.A. in philosophy from Wabash College. He has taught in Spain, France, and Vietnam, regularly presented at professional (TESOL, CATESOL) conventions, and traveled to over 40 countries. Roth also co-authored the fluency-focused Compelling Conversations series including Creating Compelling Conversations from 2019, and served on the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant national selection committee.

ChatGPT – Articles and Resources

DIESOL Episode 59 – Artificial Intelligence in ESOL

Hear what we had to say earlier in the year about AI in ESOL, before ChatGPT came on the scene:

Fun Finds 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *