In a rapidly growing world of
new technologies and based on the researches done on their effective usage in language learning,
Natural Language Processing Technologies must be first considered whether they help meet
pedagogical goals and students' needs. First chatbots were mostly constructed around pattern matching, while current ones seem to be more sophisticated, with some natural processing strategies, but still, pattern-matching is predominant. Based on my first-hand experience of
chatbots I must say, that my expectation from it was more then what I received. Most probably I overestimated
chatbots' ability and creativity as I thought it would interact like a
homo sapience. When I wrote my very first question and received a nonsense reply I realized that this could not be a platform where I could get answers to my questions as compared with a google search, this could only be a platform I could practice English with no sense. The sentences provided were correct, can not deny this, but no logic was in any of the replies. In case of wrong or misspelt words, it would either not understand what I meant or did not just answer my inquiry. I would recommend using chatbots to my intermediate level 18+ adults just to make a little fun. They could practice conversation but because of chatbot limitation in the case of multi-clause units, the virtual participant of the conversation may confuse, not get a logical answer, etc. As a teacher, I would first find the best
chatbot, which could at least make correct grammar utterances and only integrate those into the curriculum.
To practice some everyday English nouns, as well as key words for the fashion industry an app chatbox called Mona (Shopping Assistant Chat) can be used. The learner can communicate through written messages. She will ask questions and give a lot of information through menus and messages.
I really liked ok
google voice speech recognition as it not only provided grammatically correct answers but the replies were logic as well. This can be a great alternative to google search, as instead of writing you just say what you want and get the answer. It handles not grammatically correct inquiries but has limitations: long utterances are not handled.
