Sentiment Analysis

With people constantly expressing themselves on various online platforms, there are multitudes of data available that can be used in research. In most cases, these data are unstructured and can be intimidating to analyse due to the large volumes. However, techniques such as sentiment analysis can be used to analyse these data and obtain insights that are useful for researchers. Without the academic and emotional support typically found in a classroom, informal language learners control their own learning environment. This study illustrates how sentiment analysis can be utilised to obtain insights on the experiences of informal L2 learners when they engage with chatbots for L2 learning. Data were collected from various online platforms to reflect experiences with four language learning applications with chatbot features over several years. Results suggest informal L2 learners have mixed sentiments on their experiences and sentiment analysis being a viable approach to analysing informal L2 learner qualitative data.