Teachers are some of the most overworked people in society. I'd venture that if you were to offer a teacher 3 wishes, one of them would be more time. Now, with AI tools becoming widely available to everyone, that wish can become reality. AI is a great time saver, and as a life-long foreign language student, what gets me most excited about AI is its potential for language learning and practice. In this post, I will share 8 time-saving AI prompts for language teachers and tutors that can be used to create personalized and targeted learning materials. These prompts have been tested in Microsoft Copilot, my AI tool of choice, but can probably also be used in other tools.
I spent a lot of my educational years in language classes. For the 8th grade, my parents sent me to a Waldorf School. There, I was put into two language courses: Japanese (which I had spoken in early childhood and forgotten) and German (completely new to me) with students who had been learning it for years.
When I started 9th grade, my mom persuaded my high school to make an exception and let me take two languages: German and French. When I was in the 10th grade, I studied Spanish on my own for two weeks and took a placement test at the University of Hawaii. The test placed me at Spanish 201, so when I got to the 12th grade, my school let me add a third language, Spanish 3, to my schedule.
What this meant was that while my classmates spent their lunch breaks sunbathing, chatting, and hanging out, I spent a lot of mine in classrooms preparing for French, German, and Spanish national tests and speech contests, and in my senior year, my Sterling Scholar interview.
In college, my major included Spanish pedagogy which involved being a TA teaching Spanish 101 lab and passing the Praxis II Spanish exam. I also held regular tutoring sessions in Spanish, French, and Mandarin for my friends who needed help.
All this to say, even though I'm not a teacher by trade, I have seen a lot of foreign language textbooks and language exercises in my time.
In this post, I share some ideas for time-saving AI prompts for language teachers and tutors to create personalized and engaging exercises for their students. For my examples, I use Microsoft Copilot which is free. If you're new to using AI or haven't read my first post on ways to use Microsoft Copilot for language learning and practice, be sure to check it out for some beginner's tips.
Personalize learning with the help of AI
What's really great about AI other than saving time is how it makes personalizing learning possible. Everyone learns at their own pace and some students fall behind or need more support to grasp new concepts. Unfortunately, teachers don't always have the luxury to give all their students individualized support however much they wish they could.
But now, with AI tools being so accessible, it's feasible to create personalized learning materials for students who need a little extra help here and there. Execises that might have taken 1-2 hours to create in the past can now be done in a matter of minutes.
And with the launch of Microsoft Copilot Pro, you can even use Copilot directly within Microsoft Word or PowerPoint to create materials for students, further cutting down on time by elminating copying and pasting.
An important reminder before we begin...
AI can make mistakes. Be sure to check for errors before using or distributing AI-generated materials. In the interest of time, I may not scrutinize all the output in all my screenshots as they're only intended as visual references and examples of tasks that are possible with AI.
Time-saving AI prompts for language teachers
#1 Create reading passages with specific vocabulary and grammar concepts
AI/Microsoft Copilot can be a huge help for teachers who don't have the time or penchant for creative writing. Let's say you want review or test your students' retention of some vocabulary they've learned. Copilot can help you by taking a list of vocab words and creating a reading passage that includes those words.
The AI doesn't know what concepts your students have or haven't learned, so you need to be specific about the criteria. For example, if your students haven't gotten to the past tense yet, specify that the passage should be written in the present tense. Let the AI know what your students' level is. I like to use the CEFR, because it's a widely accepted standard used internationally.
Following is a sample prompt I might use to create a reading passage for some Norwegian language students at CEFR level A1. (In the prompt in the sample, I forgot to specify which form of Norwegian—bokmål or nynorsk—but this will suffice for languages that don't have such distinctions.)
Please write a 150-word reading passage in Norwegian, CEFR level A1. Please include the following words in the passage: mor, far, bro, søster, hund, katt, eple, mat, spise, spille, takk, vær så snill, fotball, se, høre, lage, middag, morgen, natt. Please use present tense in all the sentences.
Though this passage only has 125 words, it's pretty good. If you're set on 150 words, you can ask Copilot to write a few more sentences to add to the passage and regenerate it all into one response.
#2 Translate the reading passage into your students’ native language
If it's been a while since they've learned the words or your students might need help, you can get a translation for them to refer to.
Note: Copilot appears to have a character limit for translations, so if you receive a message saying something like "I can only create content, not translate it," try copying and pasting a portion of the text. I haven't had many issues with texts containing around 500-600 words.
All you need is a simple prompt like:
Please translate this passage to English.
As all language enthusiasts know, AI translations can contain errors. At the end of the response, Copilot provides links to several free online translation sites in case you need it.
#3 Create a multiple-choice quiz about your reading passage
Now, to test your students' vocabulary retention and reading comprehension, you can have Copilot create a quiz.
Please create a 5-question quiz in Norwegian level A1 about the contents of the reading passage and provide an answer key.
The answer key at the end.
#4 Create a true/false quiz about your reading passage
You can also specify the type of quiz you prefer—for example, true/false.
Please create a 5-question true false quiz on the reading passage in Norwegian level A1 and include an answer key.
#5 Create examples of new grammatical concepts
Let's say you're teaching your German students about the difference between the present, present perfect, and imperfect tenses and you need some examples. And you want the examples to be specific verbs your students are comfortable with.
Following is a sample prompt for asking Copilot to generate an example showing the difference between the three tenses. I chose precise mode because I feel that precision is important for this prompt.
Please create 3 examples demonstrating the difference between the present tense, present perfect, and imperfect for German level B2 students. Please use the same subject, verb, and direct/indirect obejcts for each tense with a translation after each example. Please use the verbs: sein, sagen, gehen.
Or, say you're teaching reflexive verbs. You need examples of how to use reflexive pronouns. Instead of thinking them up yourself, you can save time by asking Copilot to generate some examples for you.
Following is a sample prompt for asking Copilot to generate an example for each nominative pronoun (I, you, he, she, we, you (pl), they):
Please create some sample sentences for reflexive verbs for German CEFR level B1 students. Please create one sentence for each nominative pronoun: ich, du, er, sie (singular), wie, ihr, and sie (plural)
Copilot not only generated the examples, it also bolded the nominative and reflexive pronouns in each sentence.
#6 Create exercises for students to practice grammatical concepts
Example 1: Exercise/test for past participles
It's time to give your students some practice with the past tense forms of common German verbs.
I go to my chat history, find the chat where I got the sample sentences before, and quickly turn it into a fill-in-the-blank exercise. I tell Copilot exactly which parts I want to be replaced with blanks for the students to fill in.
Now please turn these sentences into fill-in-the-blank exercises where the present perfect and imperfect forms of the verbs are replaced with _____________. And please generate an answer key.
Copilot generated the blanks as I asked. If you're happy with the sentences, you can just copy the response, paste it into a word document, then print/distribute. If changes or corrections are needed, you can ask Copilot to make them or do it yourself after you paste them into your document.
Here's what I got—pasted directly from Copilot.
For the verb “sein” (to be):
- Present Perfect: Ich bin im Park _____________.
- Imperfect: Ich _____________ im Park.
For the verb “sagen” (to say):
- Present Perfect: Ich habe die Wahrheit _____________.
- Imperfect: Ich _____________ die Wahrheit.
For the verb “gehen” (to go):
- Present Perfect: Ich bin zur Schule _____________.
- Imperfect: Ich _____________ zur Schule.
And here is the answer key:
For the verb “sein” (to be):
- Present Perfect: Ich bin im Park gewesen.
- Imperfect: Ich war im Park.
For the verb “sagen” (to say):
- Present Perfect: Ich habe die Wahrheit gesagt.
- Imperfect: Ich sagte die Wahrheit.
For the verb “gehen” (to go):
- Present Perfect: Ich bin zur Schule gegangen.
- Imperfect: Ich ging zur Schule.
Example 2: Exercise/test for reflexive pronouns
Let's try another example. It's time to review or test your students' grasp of reflexive verbs. Again, to save yourself time and effort, you can have Copilot do the heavy lifting for you.
In the following prompt, I ask Copilot to generate 10 fill-in-the-blank sentences and tell it that I want the blanks where the reflexive pronouns go:
Please create 10 fill-in-the blank exercise for German B1 students to fill in the reflexive pronoun. Please create the sentences but use a blank line ________ where the reflexive pronouns should go. Please use a variety of nominative pronouns and verbs suitable for 14-year-old students and provide an answer key at the end.
Below are my results pasted from Copilot:
- Ich ziehe ________ für die Party an.
- Du wäschst ________ die Hände vor dem Essen.
- Er rasiert ________ mit einem Rasiermesser.
- Sie kämmt ________ die Haare.
- Wie freuen ________ auf das Wochenende.
- Ihr verhaltet ________ sehr ruhig.
- Sie waschen ________ die Hände vor dem Essen.
- Ich beeile ________, um den Bus zu erreichen.
- Du verletzt ________ leicht, wenn du nicht vorsichtig bist.
- Sie schämt ________ für ihre schlechte Note.
And the answer key:
- mich
- dir
- sich
- sich
- uns
- euch
- sich
- mich
- dich
- sich
In this post we covered 8 time-saving AI prompts for language teachers and tutors to create original learning materials for their students. These prompts also make it possible for you to personalize learning by creating materials and exercises that target specfic areas (words and/or concepts) where your students may be struggling. There are of course more ways you can use AI to support your language teaching practice, but these should be enough to get you started.
Remember that prompt engineering is a skill that needs to be learned and developed like any other skill in life. If at first you don't get what you want, keep adding specifics and details to get the results you need. The great thing about AI is that it's not human and won't judge you for making mistakes or lose its patience on your 5th try at a prompt. And what I really like about Microsoft Copilot is the friendly interface. No matter how many times I ask it for something, it serves it up with a smile. 😊
I've love to here what other ways you discover for creating foreign language reading materials and exercises with Microsoft Copilot. Feel free to share them with me @HelloCappuccino on Twitter/X.
