{"id":10107,"date":"2023-10-10T12:49:49","date_gmt":"2023-10-10T04:49:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iftm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/?p=10107"},"modified":"2023-10-16T18:22:40","modified_gmt":"2023-10-16T10:22:40","slug":"embrace-chatgpt-as-a-foreign-language-learning-tool-says-iftm-lecturer-wilson-hong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/embrace-chatgpt-as-a-foreign-language-learning-tool-says-iftm-lecturer-wilson-hong\/","title":{"rendered":"Embrace ChatGPT as a foreign-language learning tool, says IFTM Lecturer Wilson Hong<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\u4e2d\u6587\u6458\u8981 \/ Summary in Chinese<\/span>\n\n\n\n
The latest chatbot technology should not be a worry to those teaching English as a foreign language, suggests IFTM Lecturer Mr. Wilson Hong. Tools such as ChatGPT will in likelihood become part of educational-content development, and offer opportunities to rethink foreign-language teaching and study<\/em><\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

ChatGPT, a revolutionary artificial intelligence-powered language model, has sparked concerns in the educational field, but the chatbot technology offers \u201cmajor opportunities\u201d for teachers and education institutes to improve second-language and foreign-language teaching and assessment. That is according to an academic paper by IFTM Lecturer Mr. Wilson Hong Cheong Hin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The paper \u2013 \u201cThe impact of ChatGPT on foreign language teaching and learning: Opportunities in education and research\u201d \u2013 was published earlier this year in the Journal of Educational Technology and Innovation (click here<\/a> for details).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With ChatGPT being an \u201cinevitable\u201d development, \u201cteachers and education institutes should take it as an opportunity to innovate the century-old methods of teaching and assessment,\u201d Mr. Hong writes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He teaches courses at IFTM related to English as a foreign language. His teaching experience includes periods spent overseas, and he has worked with students of various ages and nationalities. Mr. Hong is president of the Macao Education Development Research Association and an executive board member for the Macao Association of Psychological Health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The IFTM scholar identifies in his paper an array of benefits and opportunities in education linked to the use of chatbot technology. One example is that it provides students of English as a foreign language with more opportunities for “authentic” language use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn places that are very much exam-driven, such as Macao, learners are only given artificial language [exercises] that do not correspond to the daily usage of the foreign language\u201d, suggests Mr. Hong. But as ChatGPT \u201cexcels in mimicking human interactions, learners can easily initiate authentic conversations with the chatbot,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another potential use of ChatGPT in the field of education is as a \u2018personal language tutor\u2019, says Mr. Hong. The chatbot technology is able to \u201cpinpoint language and organisational issues in students\u2019 writing, offer writing ideas and suggest corrections\u201d, as well as having the capability to \u201cexplain the use of vocabulary in great detail and offer examples.\u201d Best of all, adds the IFTM scholar, \u201cthe feedback is instant\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Hong says in his paper that the emergence of ChatGPT and similar tools creates an argument against having high volumes of traditional \u201ctake-home writing assessments\u201d. The availability to students of technology-powered writing tools undermines the \u201cvalidity and integrity\u201d of many of these sorts of traditional assignment, he states. Instead, schools should ask students to do assessment tasks \u201cthat cannot be easily assisted by artificial intelligence chatbots\u201d, and things that directly and actively engage the students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Hong adds that while the application of technology should \u201cnot be discouraged\u201d, it is necessary for it actually to be integrated within assignments, as this is how students \u201cwould most likely apply the language\u201d they are seeking to learn, later \u201cin real life\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The IFTM scholar nonetheless highlights that, \u201cin spite of its extremely powerful capabilities, ChatGPT is far from the cognition and language production of human beings as we know them\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People using the chatbot technology should understand it is \u201ca cutting-edge text-generating search engine\u201d that \u201cis good at mimicking human interactions\u201d. However, it \u201cdoes not respond to users\u2019 questions by means of reasoning, nor does it respond with emotions, but it compares existing data to draw the most likely \u2013 e.g., the most frequent and relevant \u2013 responses\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest chatbot technology should not be a worry to those teaching English as a foreign language, suggests IFTM Lecturer Mr. Wilson Hong. Tools such as ChatGPT will in likelihood […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":10110,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,136],"tags":[1852,1857,2699,1430,2700,2701,2702,2703,1089],"class_list":["post-10107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-knowledge","category-main_headline","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-chatbot","tag-chatgpt","tag-education","tag-english-as-a-foreign-language","tag-language","tag-language-model","tag-learning-tool","tag-wilson-hong"],"views":1413,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10107"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10116,"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10107\/revisions\/10116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}