An application of an AI chatbot automatic pronunciation scoring system to elementary school students

Abstract

The present study aims to explore the effectiveness of the automatic pronunciation scoring system of a newly released AI chatbot, ‘AI Pengtalk’. This English educational application, designed by EBSe and ETRI, was distributed to public elementary schools nationwide free of charge in April, 2021. This study investigates 6th graders’ recognition of AI Pengtalk and the effects of four subscales of the pronunciation score given by AI Pengtalk: intonation; segment accuracy; utterance speed; stress and rhythm. It also examines the correlation between holistic pronunciation scores and students’ English achievement test scores. The results show that 6th graders have quite positive attitudes to AI Pengtalk, and suggest that the instant feedback of AI Pengtalk’s automatic scoring system appears to have little effect. It is also shown that the subscale stress and rhythm significantly influences the corresponding holistic pronunciation score and that the correlation between pronunciation and English achievement seems to be different according to the consisting phonemes of the specific sentences. The present study suggests that elementary students’ pronunciation can be improved by the automatic scoring system of AI chatbots. Further research is recommended with the comprehensive data collection to draw more pedagogical implications.