Intelligent personal assistants for autonomous second language learning: An investigation of Alexa

Gilbert Dizon,Daniel Tang

doi:10.29140/jaltcall.v16n2.273

Abstract

The ubiquity of smartphones and the growing popularity of smart speakers have given rise to cloud-based, intelligent personal assistants (IPAs), such as Siri and Google Assistant. However, little is known about the use of IPAs for Autonomous Second Language Learning (ASLL). Thus, the aims of this study were twofold: to assess Japanese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students’ perceptions towards IPAs, also known as virtual assistants, for ASLL, and to better understand learner behavior of these technologies. A total of 14 Japanese university students were given smart speakers and interacted with a companion IPA, Amazon Alexa, over a two-month period in their homes. Moreover, the participants completed a survey consisting of Likert-scale items and open-ended questions to obtain their views of the IPA for ASLL. While the results indicated that the students had mostly favorable views of Alexa for L2 learning, many of them did not actively engage with the virtual assistant during the data collection period. Furthermore, students tended to give up when faced with communication difficulties with the IPA. These findings highlight the potential of IPAs for ASLL and underscore the gap between what students say, and what they actually do, with language learning technology.

Highlights

Despite the importance of learner autonomy and out-of-class learning in the development of a second language, what goes on inside the classroom has received far more attention in language teaching than what occurs outside the confines of formal language education (Richards, 2015)
While there is a learning curve whenever adopting a new technology, these results suggest that Alexa was not extremely difficult to use for language learning purposes
The levels of agreement were slightly lower when compared to usability, the results related to the effectiveness construct indicate that the learners had generally favorable opinions of the efficacy of the virtual assistant for language learning

Summary

Introduction

Despite the importance of learner autonomy and out-of-class learning in the development of a second language, what goes on inside the classroom has received far more attention in language teaching than what occurs outside the confines of formal language education (Richards, 2015). The concept of language learner autonomy was a reaction against behaviorism and usually associated with the notion of learner-centeredness (Gremmo & Riley, 1995) It is widely defined as the ability to take charge of one’s own language learning (Little, 1995; Littlewood, 1996; Lai, 2017). Automatic speech recognition (asr) systems such as ipas may be useful tools in the development of l2 autonomy as they allow language learners to have meaningful interaction in the target language in anxiety-reduced environments (Wallace, 2015) This is especially significant for learners who have little to no access to other l2 speakers outside of class. This study examined the views of Japanese university efl students towards an ipa, Alexa, for asll, and investigated the learners’ usage behavior of the technology

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Conclusion