Once a student adds LangBot to their buddy list on instant messenger, it will not only aid with simple translation but also gives examples words or phrases in context as well as spelling and grammatical corrections. Vocabulary tests tailored to students’ abilities can also be generated and reading suggestions for online articles can be made based on proficiency.
“There are lots of language reference resources on the Web, but language learners need to first locate them and then figure out how they can best be used to support their learning, explained IT Director of Academic Technology Services Scott Payne. “LangBot serves as a gateway to a wide array of freely available resources as well as some designed specifically for this project. Instead of searching on the Web, learners can just ask LangBot and it will find the answer and present it to learners in a conversational wrapper.”
LangBot keeps track of the user’s vocabulary development over time, adjusting to their proficiency. “What is unique to LangBot is it learns or gets smarter the more students interact with it,” said Payne. “This doesn’t mean it can learn anything; rather it becomes more capable at identifying the nuances of language used to formulate requests that it can answer.”
“Instant Messenger is a program that many students use for communicating with friends, but it has remained an untapped tool for education,” said Payne. “We see LangBot as an example of how Instant Messenger can be leveraged to support learning.”
In regards to previous experience with language programs, Payne commented, “I developed an early version of LangBot, called BodoBot, for learning German before I came to Amherst College. While some of the functions of LangBot are the same, the underlying technologies will be more sophisticated.”
Assistant Professor of Hispanic Linguistics Luiz Amaral from UMass and Senior Lecturer and Director of the Chinese Language Program Weijia Li are helping to build the program, with Li working as a Chinese language expert. “My role is to help construct the Chinese language resources determining how to best use LangBot as a tool for Chinese language learners at Amherst College and beyond,” said Li. “My research interest is in integrating technology into language teaching and learning. I have studied the impact of Web site design on learning and the use of multimedia in teaching Chinese characters.”
There are challenges with developing the program in a language vastly different from English. “There are some technical difficulties,” said Li. “Since Chinese characters don’t use whitespace to demarcate word boundaries (imagine English text if there were no spaces between words), there are some particular challenges in developing automated analyses of Chinese text.”
In September, the U.S. Department of Education’s International Research and Studies Program granted $221,000 of funding to the development of LangBot, an important national endorsement. Students have also been enlisted to help in the development of LangBot.
It is hoped that LangBot will eventually be available users at other colleges and universities, or even IM users at large. “Since LangBot will be available to anyone using Instant Messenger, it can be used by anyone anywhere who finds it useful,” said Payne. “We are also designing LangBot in a way that it could also be deployed as a Facebook application or as a gadget in Google Wave.”