Latest Taipei City, TAIWAN – Teachers often report that students learning English are likely to read and write higher than they speak, as shyness and a scarcity of practice can hinder the power to converse. Now, a chatbot funded by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education and running on next-generation large language models offers a way for K-12 students to get that practice, and in a more engaging way than was previously possible.

The children in Claire Mei Ling Wu’s English class at Er Chong Junior High School in Sanchong District, Latest Taipei City, began using the CoolE Bot soon after it was launched in late December.

Wu has been teaching English for over 25 years. Her classroom is decorated with a world map and national flags. There are boxes of knickknacks – gifts from pen pals in Japan, India and as far-off because the U.S. state of Alaska.

“Sometimes once they are shy, they don’t dare to talk up,” Wu said. Nonetheless, in the event that they can remain at their desks and speak “person-to-AI,” Wu said, they’re more comfortable than coming to the front of the category or standing in front of the teacher.

With the chatbot, which uses Azure OpenAI Service and other Microsoft AI technologies, students can pick considered one of many preset conversation topics – asking a physician or photographer about their work, for instance, or role-playing as a detective to unravel a mystery – and off they go. While older chatbots could only provide answers that were preloaded into the system, next-gen AI can generate responses by itself.

The chatbot may also assess pronunciation, accuracy and fluency, and students can practice as repeatedly as they like to boost their rating.

In the event that they are stumped, they will click on the “AI” button and the chatbot will suggest a matter to maintain the conversation flowing. A content filter keeps things from veering into inappropriate territory. If a student types or says a swear word, or something sexual, the chatbot answers in red type: “Improper input. Please try again.”

“It’s interesting, and I can learn English from it,” said student Eva Zi Yu Huang, 13, eyes peeking out between long black bangs and a blue surgical mask.

Taiwan has set a goal of becoming bilingual in Chinese and English by 2030 as its economy shifts from traditional manufacturing to more data or cloud driven businesses, where the worldwide language tends to be English. There are regional competitive pressures. For instance, Taiwan competes economically with places like Hong Kong and Singapore, former British colonies where English is widely spoken.

“We would like to assist our students quickly enhance their English skills to compete with other countries,” said Howard Hao Jan Chen, an English professor at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU).

In Taiwan, English classes are compulsory in public schools for one or two hours per week starting in third grade – with some schools starting as early as first grade, and that expands to as much as 4 hours per week in highschool.

That’s not lots of time to master a language with a complete different script, grammar and pronunciation. Common mistakes in English include dropping articles, which don’t exist in Chinese – omitting “a” or “the” – and mixing up of tenses. Practice helps, but it could actually be hard to seek out someone to do this with once you’re surrounded by Chinese speakers.

In 2015, Chen and his team launched an internet site called Cool English to assist Taiwan’s schoolkids learn English using technology. The federal government-sponsored website now has about 1.5 million registered users from Taiwan and beyond.

“The way in which that teachers teach is by reading books and listening to varied materials through the Web. But the main focus just isn’t on speaking,” said Scott Suen, a software engineer on the Cool English team. “Most Taiwanese students can pass exams and get a really high rating, but when we’re put in a native English environment, we now have a tough time communicating with foreigners.”

To assist facilitate more conversation practice, the team built its first chatbot using an older AI-based programming language.

“We quickly found it very problematic,” said Chen. “You’ve got to type in all of the possible answers for a matter raised by students – 1000’s of sentences to answer to students intelligently. It’s not AI. It’s really labor.”

Worse, he added: “We don’t know what sorts of questions students need to ask! Students won’t need to play with this type of silly tool.”

The project went dormant for some time. In 2022, the team heard about next-generation large language models. “We saw, wow, this is de facto something!” Chen said. “It was very robust. The answers are way more meaningful.”

The CoolE Bot, introduced in December, sits on the Cool English website. It uses advanced language models as a part of Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service to interact students in conversation a few set of scenarios. The language is adjustable for various ages and proficiency levels.

The CoolE Bot uses Microsoft Azure Cognitive Service Speech capabilities including text-to-speech and speech-to-text. Students can pick multiple voices with American or British accents. And Azure provides the information security that’s particularly necessary when technology is utilized in this setting.

“It’s a closed loop Azure subscription,” said Sean Pien, general manager of Microsoft Taiwan. “All conversation, finetuning and materials are inside this secure domain.”

Up to now, about 30,000 students a month are currently using the chatbot, racking up a complete of a million conversations a month.

The team is now working on improvements, including adding avatars and latest scenarios for conversations. In the long run, as more advanced models can be found, the tool may also find a way to correct errors, Chen said.

Recently, Wu’s class used the chatbot to arrange for a video call with counterparts in Bahrain, where the goal was to practice English and find out about one another.

In the course of the call, the Taiwanese kids tackled some big words with ease.

“The National Palace Museum has about 700,000 pieces of Chinese imperial artworks, making it considered one of the most important collections on the earth,” said Eva, the seventh grader, in front of her class in addition to the Bahrain students onscreen.

“The Longshan Temple in Taipei is a non secular, political and military center in Taipei City and has grow to be an attraction for foreign tourists within the post-war period,” a boy with spectacles named Frank Pan said.

When one student stumbled over the word “reservoir,” a chorus of voices helped her out.

After the children played a web-based quiz together, the Taiwanese students were excited to ask questions that they had written down for the Bahrain students.

“Are there any deserts in your country?”

“Is your school a boys’ school?”

“What type of transportation do you have got in your country?”

“Have you ever drunk bubble tea?”

And more.