Abstract:

Generally, developing and improving foreign language conversation skills belong to the most challenging aspects of foreign language education. The situation of many foreign language teachers and learners have been made even more complicated and challenging after the Covid-19 outbreak which caused a sudden move to distance learning environments. Although schools can choose from a wide range of modern digital technologies, not all of them are suitable for supporting or even replacing a spontaneous conversation in the class. The paper explores the use of chatbots as a possible solution for developing conversational skills (both in an oral and written form) of learners of English as a foreign language.

Chatbots (chatting robots or conversational robots) are usually used in commercial situations (customer services). Recently, it has been questioned how effective chatbots can be in assisting non-native English language teachers as tools for simulated conversation. While learners often do not have the opportunity to converse with the teacher or classmates as much as they need, chatbots are available at any time, they can "tolerate" the learner´s personal pace, as well as, they allow learners to keep track of their own performance over time.

The paper publishes the results of the survey administered among 362 future teachers of English (all of them were university students and non-native speakers of English) in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Nearly 41% of the respondents did not have any (conscious) experience with chatbots before taking part in the research. 23.8% of respondents had some experience with educational chatbots and 21.8% of respondents had some experience with conversing with commercial chatbots. Generally, the respondents evaluated their conversation with Mitsuku the chatbot as fluent (62.43%), entertaining (58.83%), linguistically accurate (72.92%), and entertaining (94.47%). However, only 35.63% of respondents perceived their conversation with the chatbot as natural. Consequently, 49.2% of respondents would not use chatbots in their future English classes and only 35.9 % of respondents would integrate chatbots in their teaching decidedly. Compared to the research results published abroad, the results pointed to the possible gaps in how well the Czech and Slovak teacher trainees are informed about the modern digital tools available for school or independent English language learning and what their expectations regarding the development of conversation skills are. In addition, the results showed the areas where teacher training may be extended and updated.

Keywords:

Chatbots, English language learning, non-native learners, preservice teachers, developing conversation skills.