School of somethingFACULTY OF OTHER

School of ComputingFACULTY OF ENGINEERING

Fostering language learner autonomy via adaptive conversation tutors

by Bayan Abu Shawar

Information Technology Department, Arab Open University

and Eric Atwell

School of Computing, University of Leeds

Introduction

Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) enables learner autonomy, in reading, writing, grammar, pronunciation

Chatbots for conversation practice: Jabberwacky, Lucy, Jenny

Problem: not adaptive to lessons on new topics

Retraining an adaptive chatbot for new topics and languages: Sport, Computing, Qu’ran, …

Evaluation of chatbots for conversation practice

Language learning exercise: build your own chatbot

CALL and learner autonomy

Arab Open University relies on e-learning

E-learning encourages learner autonomy

Computer Assisted Language Learning offers independent exercises in reading, writing, pronunciation (eg ISLE)…

Web-CALL for all to use autonomously

BUT language is for communication, dialogue between 2 or more participants; conversation practice requires a partner?

Chatbots

A chatbot is a program which can pretend to “chat” with a human user in natural language, to simulate conversation

Many chatbot architectures: ELIZA, MegaHAL, CONVERSE, Elizabeth, HEXBOT, ALICE, …

ALICE has 3 separate components:

• “brain” or language model,

• AIML markup formalism,

• Web-based engine http://www.pandorabots.com/

… so it is easy to replace the “brain” or language model

Chatbots for practical applications

Survey of chatbot applications: Abu Shawar and Atwell (2007) Chatbots: Sind Sie wirklich nutzlich? (are they really useful?). LDV-Forum Journal for Computational Linguistics and Language Technology, 22: 31-50

Pandorabots.com maintains a list of most popular chatbots…

http://www.pandorabots.com/botmaster/en/~1c619fdf94cf81c820cd88f3~/mostactive

Mainly developed by hobbyists and researchers,

But also some practical examples, eg advertising,

online gaming or adult websites

Chatbots for conversation practice

Chatbots can be used for conversation practice

e.g. Lucy of speak2me.net ELT website

Jenny of English2go.com ELT website

BUT though Lucy and Jenny are nice to chat to initially,

Teachers cannot adapt them to new topics and lessons

Adaptive chatbot for new topics

ALICE can be retrained with new “brain”, but needs AIML

We have program to convert a Corpus to AIML “brain”, e.g.:

Qu’ran-bot: replies with verses from Qu’ran

Computing FAQ-bot: replies with Computing answers

Python-bot: replies about Python programming language

… given a Corpus, can convert this to a chatbot!

Evaluation

Better than nothing for a specialist language like Afrikaans (Abu Shawar and Atwell 2005)

Many answers are nonsense; most students try once and don’t come back; BUT a minority find it useful (Jia 2004)

Students are more relaxed with chatbot than with teacher;

Students can repeat material without boring the teacher;

Novel technology can improve student motivation

(Fryer and Carpenter 2006)

Novel student exercise?

Student exercise: build your own chatbot!

Pandorabots.com does not require programming skills

Students must build a “language model” …

Study a corpus, use this to find conversation patterns…

To write as AIML “rules” for pandorabot chatbot.

Evaluate each other’s chatbots: learn from each other

(New technology can improve student motivation)

Conclusions

Chatbot is a useful tool for autonomous conversation practice

Current chatbots are restricted to pre-determined topic

Corpus-to-AIML software can be used to build new chatbots

Students can use a corpus to glean rules to build a chatbot