Investigating EFL learners’ humorous interactions with an intelligent personal assistant

Abstract

ABSTRACT Intelligent personal assistants (IPAs), which are voice-activated agents enabling human–computer interaction, have recently been reported to be pedagogically useful agents in language learning. IPAs use various forms of humor to better communicate with users and to compensate for any performance limitations. In order to understand the IPAs’ sense of humor and their language teaching potential, this study investigated language learners’ reactions to IPA’s humor responses. Forty-two English language learners, whose language levels varied from intermediate to upper-intermediate, engaged in humorous interactions with one particular IPA (i.e. Google Assistant), which was installed on their mobile devices, by using 15 funny prompts. The learners were then asked to rate the IPA’s responses in terms of how funny they were and to share their perceptions of the potential use of IPA in language learning processes. The results indicated that the learners rated most IPA responses as quite humorous and found the IPA’s overall sense of humor to be higher than average. Further, learners reported that IPAs could be highly useful agents to improve both their overall English and their discrete language skills. Overall, this study shows that IPAs with some sense of humor have a lot to offer to language learners.