ABSTRACT
The chapter “Intelligent interlocutors in teaching language through Distance Learning Education” is devoted to the problem of mastering speaking skills by beginner students learning a foreign language in the distance learning format (DL). A way of solving it, with the help of AI, is proposed in this chapter. The first section “Contemporary language teaching technologies: achievements and problems” describes the blended learning model (BL), based on flipped classroom technology. This model, developed in 2016–2017 by the authors of the chapter, has been implemented at the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia during the pandemic (2020–2021). Although this model has been experimentally proven to be successful in classroom training conditions, it needs improvement to suit the special needs of DL, as experience has shown. In the section “Towards using AI to teach conversational Russian”, we offer AI tools to overcome the reduced effectiveness of teaching the speaking skill, detected after conversion from the BL model to DL. Our tools are especially aimed at pronunciation and allow the formation and correction of pronunciation in the independent learning mode. An experiment conducted to check the effectiveness of these tools, proved the success of using AI for this purpose, on the one hand, and revealed the shortcomings of the toolkit, on the other. The third section “Intellectual interlocutors in the distance learning environment” describes the work of AI tools when teaching speaking skills at more advanced levels of language proficiency (A1 and A2), when students are faced with the task of participating in communication. Particular attention is paid to the role of pedagogical agents in organizing a dialogue with a student. We share our experience of using voice assistants in this role, namely, the voice assistant Alice, presented by Yandex in 2017. The section ends with a description of an experiment conducted in December 2020. Finally, we draw important conclusions based on the experience of using AI to teach speaking skills to beginner students, and outline prospects for its use in the future.
