Ruan S, Willis A, Xu Q, et al. Bookbuddy: Turning digital materials into interactive foreign language lessons through a voice chatbot[100]//Proceedings of the Sixth (2019) ACM Conference on Learning@ Scale. 2019: 1-4.
ABSTRACT
Digitization of education has brought a tremendous amount of online materials that are potentially useful for language learners to practice their reading skills. However, these digital materials rarely help with conversational practice, a key component of foreign language learning. Leveraging recent advances in chatbot technologies, we developed BookBuddy, a scalable virtual reading companion that can turn any reading material into an interactive conversation-based English lesson. We piloted our virtual tutor with five 6-year-old native Chinese-speaking children currently learning English. Preliminary results suggest that children enjoyed speaking English with our virtual tutoring chatbot and were highly engaged during the interaction.
