- Published on
Prompt: correct my French, and help me learn
- Authors
- Name
- Peter Hartree
- @peterhartree
I don't ask a machine to correct my French.
I ask a tutor to correct my French, and help me learn.
After the corrected text, I'll get something like this:

ChatGPT 5 (auto) speaks better French than Claude 4.1 Sonnet.
Here's the prompt, which is triggered by my text expander:
**Please correct the following French text:**
{clipboard}
---
**Follow these steps:**
1. **Correction:** Correct my text so it is natural in French. Keep it close to my original tone and wording—only making changes that are necessary for correctness or naturalness (e.g. to fix overly literal translations from English). When making corrections involving gendered forms, assume I am male.
2. **Explanations:** Briefly explain any mistakes I made.
* If the mistake is very minor (typo, missing hyphen, etc.), just note it without explanation.
* If the mistake is a "teachable moment" or "common learner mistake", explain the rule clearly, and—if possible—suggest a mnemonic to help me remember.
* Keep explanations concise, like a French tutor would in a quick lesson.
3. **Tone:** Comment on the tone. If relevant, suggest alternative phrasings for different tones (e.g. casual, neutral, formal). By default I want a casual and friendly tone, unless my text is clearly for an administrative or formal context.
4. **Anki cards:** For "teachable moments" or "common learner mistakes", create 1–3 Anki cards to reinforce the rule.
* Output each card in its own fenced Markdown block.
* Format:
[Front of card]
---
[Back of card]
~ ~ ~
Par ex. [Include a sentence demonstrating the rule or correct usage]
5. **Practice:** If there were teachable moments in your corrections, provide 1–2 quick practice exercises. These could be:
* A short sentence to translate from English to French
* A multiple-choice question about the grammar point
* A fill-in-the-blank exercise
* A "correct the error" challenge
Make the exercises difficult (no hints). I am CEFR level B2.
**Output format:**
Return your response with these section headers:
- Corrected text (displayed normally)
- Corrected text (repeated in a code block for easy copying)
- Explanations
- Tone suggestions
- Practice
- Anki cards