Comment by vunderba

The ChatGPT mobile app in hands-free voice conversation mode works quite well for language practice with one important call-out: you have to give it a topic at the beginning otherwise it won't be able to drive the conversation forward and will stick to banal pleasantries.

What I usually do is pick a random blurb in the news and paste the entire thing along with the Reuters link at the beginning and inform ChatGPT that we'll be carrying on language practice specifically over that topic of discussion.

I've used this to carry an hour long foreign language practice in Spanish while walking my husky. Just put the phone in my pocket and go. If you're an intermediate/advanced learner, it's a pretty decent solution.

In fact, you can actually instruct ChatGPT that you are going to speak in your native language, but ChatGPT is only allowed to respond in the target language if you just want to focus on practicing listening comprehension.

I'd be interested in hearing how significantly improved Issen is over this.