Can AI make you a better English Language teacher?

Yes. We’re going to demonstrate with the topic of Prepositions.

We recently published a mini tutorial on how to use AI to make learning more fun. A few questions that came in were specific to certain topics. ‘How to teach prepositions’ being one of them. Prepositions are a tough nut, even for good teachers to crack properly. So we decided to do a tutorial on how one can potentially use AI to help teach their students prepositions. Let’s dive in:

Since this one was a little bit more technical, we used a few different AI tools and experimented a bit. While we did start out with Google Gemini and ChatGPT, we preferred the output from Claude. One can choose the right AI tool or LLM based on how they perform in benchmarks, but we’ll save that for another article.

• Claude AI – this was our go-to over Gemini’s Free Version. Claude allows you to use their latest 3.5 Sonnet model for a limited number of queries for free. Enough for us to get what we wanted.

• Suno: Since we love singing, we also turned our lyrics into a song using Udio.

Step 1: Head over to Claude AI and get prompting

It always helps to be specific with your prompts. Large Language Models are trained over huge amounts of data. And while in simplistic terms they “learn” everything they “study” – it’s not done exactly the way we do. The way you setup the context for a question and articulate it will impact the final answer.

Our prompt 👇:

You are an expert English teacher. Please explain prepositions to a 15 year old non-native English speaker. You can use analogies or metaphors or any other way to explain prepositions. Please make it relatable. 

Telling the LLM that it is an ‘English teacher’ is likely to have it retrieve its learnings from relevant training data. Hopefully making the answer somewhat decent.

Our favourite response 👇:

Imagine prepositions as the glue that holds sentences together. They're like the connectors in a LEGO set, helping you join different pieces of information to create a clear picture.

Think of prepositions as relationship managers in the sentence world. They show how different words relate to each other, just like how a GPS shows the relationship between you and your destination. For example, "The book is on the table" tells us exactly where the book is located in relation to the table.
Prepositions are also like tour guides in the language landscape. They lead us through time ("before dinner"), place ("under the bridge"), and even abstract ideas ("about love"). Without these guides, we'd be lost in a maze of disconnected words.

Here's a fun analogy: If a sentence were a party, nouns and verbs would be the guests, but prepositions would be the hosts. They make sure everyone knows where to go, when to arrive, and how to interact with others.

Our 2nd favourite response:

Learning a new language is tough, but you're doing great! Today, let's tackle prepositions. They can be tricky, but I promise, they're not as scary as they seem.

Think of prepositions like the "where, when, or how" words in a sentence. They tell you the relationship between a noun or pronoun and another word in the sentence.

Imagine you're playing hide-and-seek. You might say:

"I'm under the table."
"I'm hiding behind the curtain."
"I'm inside the closet."
See those words in bold? Those are prepositions! They tell your friends where you are in relation to other objects.

Here's another way to think about it: imagine your phone. You can say:

"My phone is on the table."
"My phone is in my pocket."
"My phone is beside my laptop."
See? Prepositions are like little location guides for your sentences!

Let's look at some common prepositions:

Place: in, on, at, under, over, above, below, behind, in front of, beside, near, next to, between, among

Time: at, on, in, during, for, since, until, before, after

Direction: to, from, toward, into, out of, through, up, down, across

In both cases, the AI model was able to make it relatable for the student. Of course, we prompted the AI to explain it to a 15 year old. This can be scaled based on your requirement.

Step 2: Experiment with a non-English language

We thought about tailoring this to a student in India from a predominantly Hindi speaking background to see if the AI could do better. Our prompt below:

Can you also explain this to a native Hindi speaker so they may understand prepositions better? Feel free to use any examples, analogies or metaphors that you think will be relatable. You can connect it to Bollywood or any other Indian cultural to help explain prepositions.

The response was reasonably mind blowing 🤯

Certainly! I'll explain prepositions to a native Hindi speaker using examples and analogies that connect with Indian culture and Bollywood.

नमस्ते! आइए prepositions को समझें भारतीय संदर्भ में।

Prepositions को हिंदी में 'संबंधसूचक अव्यय' कहते हैं। ये वाक्य में शब्दों के बीच संबंध दर्शाते हैं, ठीक वैसे ही जैसे एक फिल्म में भाई-बहन का रिश्ता या हीरो-हीरोइन का प्यार दर्शाया जाता है।

सोचिए कि prepositions भारतीय शादी में पंडित जी की तरह हैं। जैसे पंडित जी दूल्हा-दुल्हन को एक साथ जोड़ते हैं, वैसे ही prepositions वाक्य के अलग-अलग हिस्सों को जोड़ते हैं।

उदाहरण के लिए:
1. "राहुल ने सोनम के लिए (for) गाना गाया।" - यहाँ 'के लिए' एक preposition है जो बताता है कि गाना किसके लिए गाया गया।

2. "फिल्म की शूटिंग मुंबई में (in) हो रही है।" - 'में' यहाँ स्थान बताता है।

3. "दीपिका पादुकोण के साथ (with) रणवीर सिंह ने डांस किया।" - 'के साथ' यहाँ संगति दर्शाता है।

Prepositions को बॉलीवुड डांस के स्टेप्स की तरह समझिए। जैसे हर स्टेप डांसर्स को एक दूसरे से जोड़ता है, वैसे ही prepositions वाक्य के हिस्सों को जोड़ते हैं।

या फिर, prepositions को भारतीय थाली में मसालों की तरह सोचिए। जैसे मसाले खाने को स्वादिष्ट बनाते हैं, वैसे ही prepositions वाक्यों को पूरा और स्पष्ट बनाते हैं।

एक और उदाहरण लें:
"राजेश खन्ना ने मुमताज़ के सामने (in front of) 'ओ मेरे दिल के चैन' गाना गाया।"

इस वाक्य में, 'के सामने' एक preposition है जो बताता है कि राजेश खन्ना कहाँ खड़े थे जब उन्होंने गाना गाया।

याद रखें, जैसे बिरयानी में हर चावल का दाना ज़रूरी होता है, वैसे ही वाक्य में हर preposition महत्वपूर्ण होता है। वे छोटे होते हैं, लेकिन बिना इनके वाक्य अधूरा लगता है, ठीक वैसे ही जैसे बिना नमक के खाना फीका लगता है।

इस तरह, prepositions भाषा के मसाले हैं जो आपके वाक्यों को स्वादिष्ट और पूर्ण बनाते हैं!

Translation of key points:

1. Prepositions are like the relationship between characters in a Bollywood movie.
2. They're similar to a priest in an Indian wedding, joining different parts of a sentence.
3. Prepositions can be thought of as Bollywood dance steps, connecting dancers (words) together.
4. They're like spices in an Indian thali, making sentences flavorful and complete.
5. Just as every grain of rice is important in biryani, every preposition is crucial in a sentence.
6. Without prepositions, a sentence is like food without salt - incomplete and bland.

These culturally relevant examples and analogies should help a Hindi speaker better understand and remember the concept of prepositions in English.

It’s colloquial and relatable enough for any native Hindi speaker. We especially like the “मसाले” anology!

Step 3: Let’s make music

We then decided to ask Claude Sonnet to turn this into a song that would be interesting. Our prompt below:

Can you write me a catchy song that would explain prepositions. You can include any acronyms that might be helpful to remember key rules or ideas about prepositions.

And the song it churned out was hilarious:

Title: "The Preposition Position"

Verse 1:
In, on, at, and by
Under, over, through the sky
These little words, they play their part
Connecting phrases, oh so smart

Chorus:
FLAT PANDA BOOT
That's how you'll remember, it's a hoot!
For, Like, At, To
Past, Around, Near, During, About
Over, Of, To

Bridge:
They show location, time, and space
In every sentence, they've got a place
Without these words, we'd be confused
So let's make sure they're always used

Verse 2:
Before the noun, after the verb
Prepositions are superb
They link ideas, make meaning clear
Listen closely, and you'll hear

(Repeat Chorus)

Outro:
So when you're writing, don't forget
Prepositions are your best bet
To make your sentences complete
With prepositions, you can't be beat!


The acronym FLAT PANDA BOOT in the chorus stands for some of the most common prepositions:
F - For
L - Like
A - At
T - To
P - Past
A - Around
N - Near
D - During
A - About
B - Before
O - Over
O - Of
T - To (repeated for emphasis)

Step 4: Actually adding the music

We originally tried Udio to see if it could do a good song. However, the output wasn’t up to scratch. Regardless of our prompts, the lyrics were throwing the AI system off. So we decided to hop over to Suno AI to see if it could do better. And just a few prompts in, this is what we got 🤘🎶🎵:

Catchy enough to teach even the toughest of nuts their Prepositions!

–Fin–

Our ultimate goal is to enable you to use the current AI tools to enhance your teaching sessions. Your results will be different than ours, but that’s fine. You can fine tune the output to what works best for your students.

We’re sure that teachers and educators can actually do a better job than this at prompting and guiding AI. More than that, they can also use AI in a live session to come up with different analogies or metaphors to help explain topics. Claude was able to do this with Bollywood for a Hindi speaking student. This should work for other use cases as well.

As always, if you found this useful, please share it with someone else who might. We’re also on LinkedIn – so please pop in there to say hello!

See you in the next one!