Use of adaptive feedback in an app for English language spontaneous speech

Abstract

Language learning apps have become increasingly popular. However, most of these apps target the first stages of learning a new language and are limited in the type of feedback that can be provided to users’ spontaneous spoken responses. The English Language Artificial Intelligence (ELAi) app was developed to address this gap by providing users with a variety of prompts for spontaneous speech and adaptive, targeted feedback based on the automatic evaluation of spoken responses. Feedback in the ELAi app was presented across multiple pages such that users could choose the amount and depth of feedback that they wanted to receive. The present work evaluates how 94 English language learners interacted with the app. We focused on participants’ use of the feedback pages and whether or not performance on spontaneous speech improved over the course of using the app. The findings revealed that users were most likely to access the most shallow feedback page, but use of the feedback pages differed based on the total number of sessions that users completed with the app. Users showed improvement in their response performance over the course of using the app, which suggests that the design of repeated practice and adaptive, targeted feedback in the ELAi app is promising. Patterns of feedback page use are discussed further as well as potential design modifications that could increase the use of feedback and maximize improvement in English language spontaneous speech.