Language Learning
Why I Started Using AI to Learn in Public
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Why I Started Using AI to Learn in Public
By Jinwon Jang
6/16/2026
The Moment That Changed Everything
I made a joke. She asked if I was speaking English.
That was the moment I knew my English was not good enough to express what I actually meant. I felt embarrassed. I closed Discord and never spoke to her again.
After that I lost confidence in my spoken English. I felt lost. So I kept studying — grammar, vocabulary, writing exercises — trying to fix something I could not fully identify.
Nothing improved. For six years I was studying the wrong thing.
Then I found AI. And I realized six years of effort had not been wasted — they had just been pointed in the wrong direction.
Who I Was Before AI
Before AI I was a regular ESL student spending excessive hours on writing assignments with nothing to show for it.
My work had a specific problem I could not see at the time. I was writing long, fancy sentences that sounded advanced but carried no real message. I was performing fluency instead of practicing it. I focused entirely on sounding impressive rather than saying something meaningful.
I thought grammar was the answer. If I could just fix my grammar, my English would finally match my thinking. So I studied grammar rules for years. Nothing changed.
The real problem — that my thinking ability was years ahead of my language ability — was invisible to me. I was aimlessly putting effort in the wrong direction and never getting the results I wanted.
What AI Diagnosed That Nobody Else Could
When I started using ChatGPT and Claude for writing feedback, something immediately felt different.
Before AI, feedback from real people came with emotion. They reacted subjectively, criticized my grammar and structure, and sometimes made me feel worse about my writing than before I asked. My confidence dropped. My motivation dropped with it.
AI gave me something I had never received before — feedback without drama. Objective, customized, and direct. I could read it, accept it, and apply it immediately without any personal emotion getting in the way. Because it is just a tool. And a tool does not judge you.
But the most important thing AI gave me was not the feedback style. It was the diagnosis.
For the first time something told me my problem was not grammar. It was nuance. My thinking was years ahead of my ability to express it. I was avoiding my main ideas in essays instead of developing them — not because I had nothing to say, but because my English felt insufficient to say it.
AI can be a great teacher because it gives you no drama — just the most direct path to improvement.
Is Using AI for Writing Cheating?
The most common question I get about this is simple. Is using AI for writing cheating?
My honest answer is — it depends on the context.
At university level most student writing already involves mimicking other people's ideas, structures, and arguments and blending them into your own words. Students who generate fully original ideas in their essays are genuinely rare. AI is helping most students do what they were already doing — just more efficiently.
At a professional level the answer changes. A professional writer's job is to generate original ideas and express them independently. If AI is writing the text for them then yes — that crosses a line. Their value is their voice and their thinking. Outsourcing that is a different conversation.
But I am neither of those.
I am an ESL learner using AI the way an athlete uses a coach. The coach does not run the race. The coach watches, identifies weaknesses, and gives feedback so the athlete can perform better. Every idea in my writing comes from my real experiences. AI helps me express those ideas in English that matches what I actually mean.
AI is just a tool. The user determines how it is used — not the other way around.
Why AI Feedback Alone Was Not Enough
But AI feedback alone was not enough.
AI has real limits. It can identify flow problems, argument errors, grammar mistakes, and structural weaknesses. It does these things consistently and without emotion. But that emotionless quality — the same thing that makes AI feedback so useful — is also its biggest limitation.
AI moves on logic. Humans move on emotion.
A real reader might connect your writing to something personal in their own life. They might react in a way you never expected. They might challenge an idea from a direction AI would never consider — because AI has no life outside of your conversation. That unpredictable human reaction is something no algorithm can simulate.
I realized my writing was becoming technically correct but emotionally flat. I needed real readers.
So I published. Even though I was afraid of harsh criticism. Even though I knew some people would judge me for using AI. I built LearnLedger anyway — to prove that an ESL learner can be a genuine English writer, and as evidence that English will no longer be my bottleneck.
Frequently Asked Questions
Before AI existed did you have any plan to publish your article? I did. But I had no one to give me feedback and I could not even write a single complete sentence. I was ambitious with no ability to match it. AI became the missing piece between my ambition and my actual output.
Do you feel bad that AI is taking over writers? Not in my case. AI is not taking my job — it is giving me an advantage I never had before. For someone who spent six years studying English with no real improvement, AI is not a threat. It is the tool that finally made progress possible.
Do you think we should study English or just use AI to write? It depends on your goal. English is not just writing — it is reading, listening, understanding, and communicating. Those skills still require real study. But using AI to improve your writing can save enormous time and energy if you use it as a coach rather than a ghostwriter.
Why is this website important to you? LearnLedger is proof. Proof that I am a human being with real ideas worth reading. Proof that my English ability is real and growing. Every article I publish here is evidence that the six years were not wasted — just pointed in the wrong direction.
How much of your writing does AI actually write? AI expands my sentences and makes them sound more natural. But every idea, experience, and opinion is entirely mine. AI is the tool. I am the writer.
If this resonated with you, I write about using AI for real learning — not hacks, not tool lists, but honest experiments and what I actually discovered.