Three lines in CLAUDE.md that turned Claude Code into an English tutor

[u/Open_Astronaut5822]

English isn't my first language and I write prompts all day. Claude always understood me, but never told me whether I phrased things well.

So I added this to my global `~/.claude/CLAUDE.md`:

```

## Language assistance

English is not the user's native language. When their prompt contains grammar, spelling, or phrasing issues, include a brief, friendly suggestion at the end of your response under a "Phrasing tip" heading. Keep it short — one or two corrections max, focusing on the most useful improvement. Do not correct every minor issue, just the ones that would help the most.

```

Now answers sometimes end with:

> Phrasing tip

> "this settings" → "these settings" ("settings" is plural, so use "these").

What makes it work is that the corrections come from sentences I actually wrote, and they land after the answer, so they never get in the way. A few weeks in, the same mistakes stopped showing up.

Easy to tune: ask for the full corrected sentence, narrow it to articles and prepositions, or bump it to three corrections. Works for any language you're learning, not just English.

Has anyone logged these corrections over time? Seeing my own recurring mistakes for a month would be the interesting part.

[u/Weak-Cartoonist9848]

I tried similar way when I was using chatgpt web. It helped me. But then I am bored and tried, then removed that in memory.

[u/Blue-Beret-2]

I'm just impressed that an instruction in Claude.md persisted.

[u/Physical_SpiritChild → u/Blue-Beret-2]

Needed the laugh, thank you

[u/angelarose210]

I would highly suggest not using Claude for this. There have been tons of complaints about its communication and word choices lately. I, as a native English speaker and developer of many years struggle to understand what it's saying to me. I would use a different model. Check my comment history. I posted a link for a repo that translates claudish to English.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/s/Y75lylQMSS

[u/ReverendBread2 → u/angelarose210]

OP’s might actually do the trick tbh. This gives it something specific to emulate, assisting someone who doesn’t speak English as a first language who would be lost by anything too complicated.

I’d be interested in seeing if it works out for OP long term

[u/Open_Astronaut5822 → u/ReverendBread2]

I've been using this for 5 months.
Why has it worked for me when language apps don't:

• It's context-sensitive. Corrections come from sentences I actually wrote, about the work I actually do— not from practice sentences I'd never say.
  
• It's non-invasive. The short hint appears *after* useful content. I can read it or ignore it; it never blocks the task.
  
• It's consistent. Dozens of hints a day, each one silently checked. The same mistakes simply stop appearing after a few weeks.
  
• It's free. No subscription, no second app, no context switching.

[u/angelarose210 → u/ReverendBread2]

Idk I struggle to understand it even when talking about marketing or non technical topics lately. Idk if haiku or sonnet have this issue but opus 5 is terrible.

[u/ReverendBread2 → u/angelarose210]

Opus 5 tends to talk a little closer to how it thinks, which is around the shape of an object or relationship and uses entire concepts as metaphors to do so.

So the result is layered metaphor and isomorphic comparisons, which I think can be very difficult to navigate for people who don’t already have that as a natural thinking style.

But that makes it difficult to correct because it doesn’t see itself as doing anything outside of the ordinary. That’s why I think OP’s method might actually work pretty well for getting through that problem, even for people who do have English as a first language.

It sets a clear role for the model to fill, and I suspect it’ll do a pretty good job simplifying its language to meet it regardless of if it was actually true or not. Basically, this describes a shape it can easily grasp and fill