wu :: forums - Print Page


    
      
        wu :: forums
        (http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi)
      

        riddles >> general problem-solving / chatting / whatever >> A new way to learn English as a second language.
        
(Message started by: amichail on Jun 24^th, 2008, 5:35pm)

Title: A new way to learn English as a second language.
Post by amichail on Jun 24^th, 2008, 5:35pm

As you may know, players of http://chatbotgame.com shape the chatbot's personality and expertise by adding simple chat rules. The better their chat rules, the higher they will score. Higher scoring rules are more likely to be used to generate a chatbot response.

Would such a game be useful for learning English (or any other natural language)? After all, to score lots of points, you will do well by focusing on common sorts of conversation fragments -- exactly the sort of thing that someone learning English should focus on. Moreover, you get to see how well your rules do in actual chats in terms of a rule score and actual conversation fragments.

If the player uses poor grammar in a chat rule, then that rule may not score well assuming that most people chatting with the bot already know English pretty well.

Even if someone doesn't vote down a rule with bad grammar, he/she might comment on the bad grammar in his/her response.

In essence, the chat rules can be viewed as open-ended exercises that are graded by the people chatting with the bot.

P.S. One unexpected use of the ESP Game is that it was found useful for learning English (see http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143#22m35s). So maybe that's the case here as well?

Title: Re: A new way to learn English as a second languag
Post by towr on Jun 25^th, 2008, 12:56am

How would someone that doesn't know any english get started in this game?
You can't learn a new language starting from scratch by reading it. The words would simply be ungrounded symbols. At least in the ESP game the meaning of words is grounded by the picture you're presented with.

Title: Re: A new way to learn English as a second languag
Post by amichail on Jun 25^th, 2008, 8:09am

on 06/25/08 at 00:56:16, towr wrote:

But you can use this game to learn English in combination with other resources/methods. For example, the game can be used to motivate you to learn certain common phrases so you can create chat rules for them.

Title: Re: A new way to learn English as a second languag
Post by iatkrox on Jul 2^nd, 2012, 12:11pm

If you use internet in most of time it's automatically improve your English knowledge.So my idea is chat with someone in English and watch movies and read top articles .That's all ;)