Hello and welcome once again to another weekly update on the language vlog! We hope you're doing well as the school season starts up again and work... well, that continues.

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The weather has notably turned cooler here in Beijing and that's been a welcome relief from the heat and humidity that covered the country just a few short weeks ago. Chongqing continues its scorching heat but they somehow always endure.

On to the videos for the week...

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In a shift that may or may not be temporary, possibly an addition to the channel instead of a replacement, this week saw use go live a few times which also meant fewer short videos were posted to the channel. This week's LIVE videos included:

1. Chinese Writing - In which I try my hand at tracing through the Traditional Characters of LanTingJiXu, a classical Chinese poem written by Wang XiZhe. Named "Orchid Garden", it's apparently a classic that people often read in school as part of their Chinese literature class. So why do I have a copy? Because I saw another lady practicing her calligraphy skills with these large sheets of paper and so I figured I could tackle two behemoths at once: reading something in Chinese while practicing my writing skills. The problem? Tracing doesn't always lead to reading comprehension AND learning Traditional Characters doesn't always lead to Simplified Characters recognition.
2. Russian Reading and Grammar Practice - In this livestream I read through a few articles on the BBC Russian website in an effort to practice my pronunciation and grammatical awareness. Sadly, due to the ongoing conflict/war in Ukraine, many of the articles focus on that subject matter. I did, however, manage to find one article about the Titanic and a recent goings on down there (hint: a railing fell off of the boat.) I also reviewed some of my noun declensions and verb conjugations.
3. Let's learn some English! - A new series(?) that I'm looking to practice my online presentation skills as, tbh, it's not something I do very often. I know there was a huge push towards online teaching as COVID took over our lives, but I was spared from it since I don't often teach classrooms. This new livestream is meant both as a refresher for me and my ESL teaching abilities and for potential ESL teachers who might be looking for a brush up on their terminology and the like.
4. Is China SAFE?! - A long form video in which I discuss some of the concerns about living or visiting China. To be clear, I work from home these days and don't travel nearly as much as I used to, and I also confine myself to my little neighbourhood. But, for what's it worth, in the years that I've been in the country, this is what I've seen go on in China and what you should watch out for when you come to visit.

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Got a couple of articles for you.

First one is about the choice between a real life teacher and an AI teacher.

https://www.todayonline.com/commentary/commentary-study-new-language-human-teachers-ai-year-using-both-learnt-2480721

The article discusses some of the ups and downs of learning a language through APPs such as Duolingo. While I don't think AI and modern tech will replace human teaching any time soon, it does prove a huge benefit to people who either don't have ready access to language instruction or, more likely, want to practice even more in addition to what they do with their teachers.

This article is further bolstered by a recent, informal, study by Nature Magazine that tried to use ChatGPT in several different languages other than English.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nature-magazine_why-chatgpt-sucks-at-some-languages-activity-7227630200417583104-w7DE?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

The result?

ChatGPT works best in English and only moderately well in other major languages, and horribly in several not-as-widely-spoken languages. I guess it's no surprise since much of what ChatGPT and other LLM (large language models) were trained on was the English internet.

What do you think? Do you think this will change over time? How much so? And have you tried to use ChatGPT or its relatives in your own language? Let us know, it would be interesting to find out. :)

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And finally, some of the things we're up to include the long form videos we've mentioned in previous newsletters AND a new one about the game taking over China by storm - Black Myth: WuKong.

I'm not a huge gamer but I was told I should probably have a look at it, so this week we took a look at the game that is causing such a ruckus in the Mainland and around the world.

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We'll leave it there for this week. Thanks for reading! If you have any comments, questions, concerns, suggestions, or other things to learn, let us know if we can help and get in touch!

Hope you're well

Steve

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