Pre-Service Primary English Teachers’ AI Chatbots

Abstract

This study evaluates 17 AI English-language chatbots that were developed by nine groups of pre-service primary school teachers (N = 26). According to the achievement standards for the two grade bands in the curriculum (Grades 3-4 and 5-6: Ministry of Education, 2015), each group developed two chatbots, using Dialogflow API. The first and second chatbots were designed to talk the way a new friend would and in a specific situation, respectively. The chatbots have been found to provide opportunities for primary school students to engage in playful and interactive practice during which the students use a variety of communicative functions, and the chatbots are therefore expected to make solid contributions to the attainment of speaking and listening achievement standards. It was also noted that compositional techniques in chatbot development would generate facilitative factors for foreign language learning, such as topic consistency, flow variability, and grounding.