Integrating Ai Partners Into The University Language Classroom: Balancing Interest In The Language, The Course And Classroom Activities.

Abstract

Students with less confidence in their foreign language skills prefer chatbots over human partners (Fryer, 2006). While growing in language competence, Chatbots are still imperfect language partners (Coniam, 2014; Fryer & Nakao, 2009) . Initial interest in chatbot partners might be due chiefly to their novelty, therefore contributing little or nothing to longterm interest (Fryer et al, 2017). Educational technology is often seen as an important support for student motivation.Research suggests that this support may be due to a limited novelty effect (Chen et al., 2016; Fryer et al., 2017). The long-term effect of chatbot partners and students’ perceptions of chatbot partners’ usefulness for language learning is unexplored. While Chatbots power to motivate language learners might be limited, their support for language learning skills development might still make them worth further investment. To ascertain chatbot partners’ usefulness, it is essential to gather qualitative responses from student users and balance the perceived strengths and weakness of chatbot partners for language learning. Research is therefore necessary to estimate the longterm nature of chatbot partners’ novelty effect on students’ interest in learning and gauge the perceived strengths and weaknesses of chatbots as language learning partners