EnglishBot: An AI-Powered Conversational System for Second Language Learning
Sherry Ruan, Liwei Jiang, Qianyao Xu, Zhiyuan Liu, Glenn M. Davis, Emma Brunskill, James A. Landay
Abstract
Today, many students learn to speak a foreign language by listening to and repeating pre-recorded materials due to the lack of practice opportunities with human partners. Leveraging recent advancements in AI, Speech, and NLP, we developed EnglishBot, a language learning chatbot that converses with students interactively on college-related topics and provides adaptive feedback. We evaluated EnglishBot against a traditional listen-and-repeat interface with 56 Chinese college students through two six-day user studies under both voluntary and fixed-usage conditions. Students’ fluency improved more with EnglishBot as evaluated by the IELTS grading standard for voluntary learning. EnglishBot users also showed higher engagement and voluntarily spent 2.1 times more time interacting with EnglishBot. Our results suggest that conversational interfaces may benefit foreign learners’ oral language learning, particularly under casual learning settings.