Four prompts I used every day
A leading online translation service says “Tabelle” means
“table.”
Turns out, it’s the kind you find not in a restaurant but rather in Excel — which
explains
why on Tuesday afternoon, I couldn’t find a single table.
A dictionary is more reliable. And it's totally user-friendly if you're either a robot or have authored the thing.
ChatGPT can translate and provide a definition at the same time.
Full sentences make information easier to digest. A detailed description evokes a mental image, which is actually one of the tricks to remembering new words.
ChatGPT remains my go-to translation tool.
I use the same thread for larger chunks of text too.
As a bonus, no other tool does such a great job with colloquial language. According to the well-known services, “you owe me 50 flakes” is a perfectly sane sentence, and I should just accept some weird oat economy going on there. Then came ChatGPT and said: it’s 50 bucks, not flakes.
Whisper and murmur.
When words look practically identical, the best way to pin down their meaning is to set
them against each other.
For example, “Gebüsch” and “Gesträuch” both refer to
bushes.
Confused, I asked a native speaker to explain the difference.
“Wow, never thought about that,” was the response.
Right.
A number of social media accounts do exactly that as their main content.
They pick a pair of words that often causes confusion and break down the difference.
But with the production rate of one post per week, it would take me about 89 light years to
master German.
I used flashcards to memorize new words, but my failure rate was driving me crazy.
I was ready to try something radical: instead of calling myself a headless chicken
capable of exactly nothing, I’d assume that difficult words just need a bit more
interweaving into the fabric of the language.
Either it works, or I’ll give up on this whole German thing and switch to the clicks and
whistles of dolphins.
Words don’t exist in a vacuum. Words stick to other words.
I did look up problematic words in the books I’d read.
It works beautifully for nouns, but German verbs conjugate (change forms) and, to make
things worse, banish their prefix to the end of the sentence.
Ich habe etwas vor. Er hat etwas
vor.
Obviously, I’ve written a regular expression (a coded text search pattern) to account
for this behavior, but there’s a reason I’m not writing an article on “How to Find an E-Book
Reader That Supports Regular Expressions” — people don’t usually need a manual on how to be
a total freak.
I wrote the provided examples down in a notebook.
Some words stuck after 5 sentences, some after 50.
The prompt is also handy for spotting collocations (common word pairings) and shifts in
grammatical structure.
In English, you make a decision; in German, you meet a
decision. Die Entscheidung treffen.
“I like it” switches object with subject and becomes “It
pleases me”. Es gefällt mir.
Feedback is crucial for improvement.
It’s also a great tool for destroying your self-esteem, but at least ChatGPT has no red
pen.
I mean, I hope ChatGPT doesn’t forward my messages to the other large
language models, having a laugh about how little computational power my sad human brain is
equipped with — and how easy it’s going to be to overtake us all as a species.
I use this prompt for all emails and text messages I’m about to send, which nicely covers both formal communication and casual language.
Speed matters too.
Corrections received in two days or two hours are less effective than immediate
feedback. Therefore, I checked my assignments before submitting them to a teacher.
Seeing a mistake and fixing it right away also prevents you from solidifying the mistake
in the next 27 exercises.
In a textbook, you’re given a topic and a mere 3 exercises to practice, which, upon finishing, wouldn’t even bring me to the A1 level. More like A0.023.
Mastery is a function of repetition.
Always being provided with the next task is a good old trick to hook the brain into doing “just one more.”
I tried several other free exercise platforms, but their interfaces are just sad.
With ChatGPT, I can fire off answers to train not only recollection but also
speed, because in an actual conversation, I’m aspiring not just to come up with the right
words, but to do so before my interlocutor falls asleep.
The problem is, the prompt works great — until it doesn’t.
Therefore, as a rule, I trust ChatGPT only when I have enough understanding to spot
nonsense.
The same prompt might work better on some days and not on others.
I’m really close to finding a causality in the position of the stars.
And on some days, we’re just too tired of each other and need to take a break.
With love,
by Polina Iureva
November, 2024