An artificial vocabulary learning assistant

Abstract

This article presents an online application developed to improve vocabulary learning through games, quizzes and interaction with a chatbot. The application was tested experimentally on a sample of twenty proficiency-level students divided into two groups and tested on English vocabulary learning in two stages. In the first stage, the first group of students was the control group, who studied a vocabulary section from the book. The second group was the experimental group, which studied using the proposed application. In the second stage, the two groups were reversed and asked to learn the vocabulary of the second unit. According to experiment results, using the particular application improved students' performance, as, in both tests, students of the experimental group outperformed those of the control group. In addition, the analysis of a questionnaire answered by all students confirmed that most prefer this application over traditional learning methods as they consider it quite enjoyable and easy while agreeing that it helped them learn vocabulary. The application is available on the website: http://users.sch.gr/polizipan.