Chatbots in teaching a foreign language: advantages and controversial issues

The current stage of technological development of the world community is characterized by the dynamic introduction of artificial intelligence technologies into various spheres of human life. Informatization of education contributed to the integration of new innovative technologies in the teaching of certain subjects, including a foreign language. Chatbots are one of the modern programs that operate on the basis of natural language processing and machine learning technologies, which can be used in the development of students’ foreign language speech skills. By chatbots from the standpoint of the methodology of teaching foreign languages, we propose to understand a dialog training program capable of developing foreign-language oral and written speech skills of a student based on the algorithms of human speech behavior embedded in it by maintaining a dialogue with him and imitating human speech. In this work, based on the analysis of methodological research, we highlight the advantages of chatbots in teaching a foreign language and the controversial issues of using this program in the educational process. The advantages include the following: 1) increasing students' motivation to learn a foreign language based on innovative artificial intelligence technology; 2) the opportunity for students to improve foreign language speech skills; 3) the availability of chatbots for the development of students' speech skills, regardless of their location and time; 4) reducing the level of anxiety of students when interacting with the machine. The controversial issues include: 1) students are not always ready to replace the teacher with a chatbot; 2) most of the conversational chatbots are aimed at students with a level of foreign language proficiency A2-B1; 3) stereotyped and limited set of phrases used by the chatbot.