TZU LIN CHIN (NATIONAL TAIWAN NORMAL UNIVERSITY)

A CASE STUDY ON THE IMPACT OF INTELLIGENT PERSONAL ASSISTANTS ON ENGLISH MAJORS’ ORAL PROFICIENCY : DIGITAL LITERACIES/LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TECHNOLOGY

Intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) have become a popular tool in language learning with the advance of artificial intelligence (AI) and automatic speech recognition (ASR). IPAs (i.e. Siri, Alexa, Cortana and Google Assistant) can offer engaging, low-pressure learning environments, enormous authentic materials, and pronunciation feedback for L2 learners. Despite their growing use, the impact, usage strategies and perceptions of IPAs among English majors outside the conventional classroom setting remain underexplored. This case study investigated how English majors utilize IPA (Google Assistant) for daily conversations. Six English majors engaged with several IPA tasks provided by the researcher on their smartphones for 20-30 minutes daily over a month. Both quantitative (English oral proficiency tests) and qualitative data (questionnaires, interviews, conversation logs, and audio recordings) were collected and analyzed. Findings showed significant improvements in the English majors’ speaking skills especially the speaking fluency. A detailed analysis of qualitative data revealed that English majors applied some strategies to overcome the communication breakdowns. All the participants showed positive attitudes in the out-of-class use of IPA on daily conversation. The findings of the study provide future research directions and pedagogical suggestions on IPA in L2 learning.

Tzu-Lin Chin is currently a postgraduate student in the Department of English, TESOL program, National Taiwan Normal University. Her research interests include Technology Enhanced Language Leaning and Second Language Acquisition.