alt Hacker NewsI am doing something similar but mix more simpler and didn’t even get to the stage of building an llm tool. I am just using ChatGPT to distill common learning books and set aside 1 hr thrice a week. I made considerable progress, to me and then I used Italki to confirm.
I used voice mode on ChatGPT to learn the tones for mandarin, and general vocab and sentence structure while for Japanese it helped me expand proper sentence structure greatly.
It sounds silly, but it helped reenforce a base structure that is helpful and having it confirmed by a tutor was nice. Best is I can really do it whenever. What op posted does sound next stage, and I can imagine it’d be a viable platform.
I don’t suggest notebookllm to make an audiobook, I tried and it was the most dryest speech I ever heard. It did sound convincing enough if you were to do a podcast for it and that is what it does.. but it was completely horrid for learning but maybe that’s just me.
One of the cool things about LLM-assisted language learning that I have found is this:
Language is (for almost every adult) deeply personal. Even the best of teachers must be so nuanced for every error correction, repetition request, nudging, encouraging, etc. Why? Because the adult student is greatly affected by human feedback in this context.
This is one of the (many!) reasons why children learn languages (their first included) kinda fast. Their ego isn't involved.
Learning with a non-human, at least for me, is kinda cool as I don't feel bad telling it "look, I get it, don't ask me that again" and I don't take it personally when it says "that's not quite right."
I've got tons of experience as both a language student and a teacher, btw.