With the advent of large language models (LLMs) and easily accessible AI technology such as ChatGPT, foreign language education is faced with new tools with enormous potential for language practice. By simply opening an account and starting a conversation, students can practice their acquired knowledge with a slightly unconventional but tireless partner in the target language and even about the language in a metalanguage they have already mastered.

But is it really all that easy? I gave 49 university students in our early-stage elementary Japanese course a homework assignment to attempt a short conversation in Japanese with an AI chatbot on a topic of their own choosing. In addition to a screenshot of their conversation, they were also required to include a text describing the prompts they used for the task and their general impressions.
The main questions I aimed to answer through this assignment were: What prompts did students intuitively use to get the chatbot to do what they wanted? What were the main difficulties they encountered when trying to communicate?

The exploration gave me a clearer understanding of the importance of predefining roles when engaging with an AI-based chatbot for conversation practice. Furthermore, many students expressed frustration that the chatbot repeatedly failed to yield to their requests for easier, shorter replies with fewer kanji characters. A useful chatbot for foreign language conversation practice should be customized and pre-trained at a suitable language level.

Authors:
Benedicte Irgens, University of Bergen, Norway

About the Presenter(s)
Benedicte Irgens is a teaching professor (docent) of Japanese language and linguistics at the University of Bergen, Norway, where she also has been awarded the status of Excellent Teaching Practitioner.

Connect on ResearchGate
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Benedicte-Irgens

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