Dear Keith,
Thank you for your good wishes for the New Year. At the current time I like to connect my wishes not only for your personal welfare and healthiness, but especially for having again peace, at least in Europe, and not running in a new catastrophe.
You see me very rarely in your lessons, and I can imagine you are suspecting that I’m tired of learning English, particularly due to my age. That’s not the case. I’m working with English every day, but, indeed, not visiting your lectures very often. Let me explain why.
But first I want to warn you that this letter will become relatively long and I wouldn’t be surprised if you will stop reading before the end and I don’t expect any answer. I can imagine you are very occupied. Therefore, you are my victim, I need somebody to write to.
Back to why I’m not very often at your lessons. First, I’m not a good learner, never have been a good pupil. I want to learn English not by learning vocabulary, learning grammar words, idioms, phrases and so on. I’m a consumer and, like now, a producer. I found out, that at my age it’s better to hope learning happens accidentally by these techniques.
I tried to learn, for example, with the help of ANKI. It didn’t work. I was and I am trying again and again improving my pronunciation – with the hope that better pronunciation would help to overcome my comprehension problems. With support by the AI app BoldVoice I’ve reached a level of 75% pronunciation correctness which seems to me a hurdle, not being able to jump over it.
Now, you can imagine, I haven’t the concentration power for following lessons like yours of one or two hours. But often I’m picking up some parts of your recorded lectures or PDFs, and, that’s most important, I’m enjoying the breakout rooms very often. That’s not only a matter of practicing English but way more important having contact with a lot of people all over the globe. I think that is the best output not only of subscribing to your Golden Course but also of my adventure diving into the English language.
You see I can stop myself writing and writing. Grammar comes later.
One of my preferred helpers in improving my English is ChatGPT. I know there is a big danger of getting addicted to/dependent on it. I’ve been using it especially for improving my writing in the first phase. After some months I felt I’m losing my naïve self-confidence. Now I’m trying to avoid its corrections.
This letter is at first handwritten then I will dictate it to ChatGPT with a strict order to correct only heavy grammar mistakes. Sometimes ChatGPT can’t help to do more. These corrections will be taken over by me very rarely.
At the moment I’m using it to overcome the so-called translation trap in speaking, not writing. The last one I’m doing by myself, for instance, during writing this letter without looking in a dictionary or other means or stop this writing too often.
- Recently, I was experimenting with a very difficult subject of writing. I tried to write a short essay about the new American Europe policy. The content of it was only rather fuzzy in my brain. I wouldn’t be able to write it in German without great difficulties. Now I tried to formulate it in English immediately. That means thinking it in English, writing it in English without having clarity of all aspects with the help of my German language operating system. The result of that was understandable but not very impressive. Perhaps I will repeat it in German, and then I will translate it, perhaps from memory, to see what the result will be then.
Well, let me finish this letter now. If you have read it up to this end, then send me, please, a short sign.
Have a happy new year!
Dietrich
PS your writing is exceptional, even if you use Chatgpt for big errors, still very impressive
Hello Dietrich,
Undoubtedly, the longest email I have had from a student. 😉
Thank you for sharing, I think for a lot of us ‘older’ students learn better by doing, practising and ‘producing’ as you put it. That is certainly my approach now (with Spanish and French). Unfortunately, schools tend to emphasise studying words and grammar, and do little production of the language.
I think your approach to thinking directly in English is a good one, and the writing technique is a good way. Likewise, speaking to ChatGPT directly is a great way to practise conversation and thinking directly in English. Don’t worry about over-dependence, if you are mixing that with conversations with real people, which you seem to be doing with the Speaking Practice rooms, then that is fine.
Keep going, and keep learning in a way that works for you.
Lovely to hear from you – and I wish you a great 2026, full of good health and more English fluency!
Best wishes,
Keith
PS your writing is exceptional, even if you use Chatgpt for big errors, still very impressive.