우리나라 초등학교 영어학습자를 위한 순서도 기반 의미협상 챗봇 개발 연구

Development of a flowchart-based English-speaking chatbot for Korean primary students’ negotiation of meaning

The increasing influence of artificial intelligence in human society has encouraged novel attempts in the domain of English language education. One such attempt involves using chatbots to provide learners with meaningful English-mediated conversations. Chatbots are conversational agent systems that can process natural languages (e.g., English) to perform various linguistic tasks including interviews and small talks. Recognizing the practical utility of chatbots, this paper introduces a flowchart-based English-speaking chatbot which has been developed for Korean primary students to engage in negotiation of meaning (Long, 1983), a famous interactional event known to facilitate second language acquisition. This paper first discusses the theoretical and technological bases of the chatbot and then demonstrates details in its design as well as the development process using Dialogflow API. This information should provide useful guidelines when another theoretical insight from second language research applies to the design of a new chatbot for young learners of English.