Please join us for our Applied Linguistics Spring Colloquium TOMORROW, featuring our own students Yuan Ye, (Ph.D Candidate, Dept. of Education) and Bernadette Ramírez (Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Spanish and  Portuguese)

AI vs Humans: Unraveling the impact of chatbots and human instructors on Spanish L2 learners' willingness to communicate

Ye Yuan (Dept. of Education)

As artificial intelligence (AI) gains increasing recognition in second-language (L2) teaching and learning, questions arise regarding its effectiveness in engaging learners and fostering communication compared to human instructors. This study examined the impact of AI chatbots versus human instructors on willingness to communicate (WTC) among Spanish L2 learners. Forty-six college students participated in the five-week study, with twenty-six in the experimental group practicing with AI chatbots on a Virtual Reality platform (Immerse) and twenty in the control group practicing with human instructors on an online chat platform (Lingua Meeting). The study adopted both quantitative and qualitative methods. Objective metrics (word count and conversational turns) and subjective ratings quantified students' WTC during practice and L2 WTC change following the interventions. Qualitative analysis of oral interactions and post-interviews identified key differences between AI- and human-mediated communication. The findings suggested that participants were as willing to communicate with AI chatbots as with human instructors, and AI chatbots can be as effective as human instructors in promoting L2 WTC. The primary factors influencing participants’ WTC were conversation context, L2 anxiety, and academic support. However, AI chatbots and human instructors influenced WTC in different ways. The study expanded our understanding of L2 WTC in AI-mediated contexts and highlighted the need to refine existing WTC models to incorporate virtual features and pedagogical supports as essential constructs of WTC development in AI-mediated L2 learning.

Explicit Instruction of Spanish Infinitive and Gerund through Critical Tasks: The Use of Critical Pedagogy in Heritage Language Teaching

Bernadette Ramírez (Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese)

The present study examines the explicit instruction of the Spanish infinitive and the gerund through critical tasks, utilizing critical pedagogy and task-based language teaching to promote critical language awareness. Forty-two participants who are Spanish heritage speakers completed four critical tasks in a Spanish heritage language course at the university level. Each critical task was designed based on the week’s topics in a quarter system. Two tasks were conducted without explicit instruction on the infinitive and gerund, while two included explicit instruction of the grammatical structures. After each task, students completed a reflection to measure their critical language awareness and answered three open-ended questions that asked what they liked or did not like about them, as well as suggestions to strengthen the critical tasks.