Language games for Educational Purposes (IWT489)

On the one hand, mastering foreign languages has become a necessary requirement to fully function in the globalized world we live in. In order to acquire a linguistic level that comes close to that of native speakers, a language learner often needs to overcome the fact that one and the same language strategy (e.g. the expression of position/place) is often conceptualized differently in two languages. For instance, a Dutch native speaker would say 'de melk zit in de fles' (lit. 'the milk sits in the bottle), while a French speaker would never use a position verb but instead he would fall back on the neutral 'être', to be. On the other hand, it is a given fact that non-native Dutch speakers in the Flemish educational system not only perform worse in language related courses but overall score lower than their native companions.

The goal of this research project is to develop a software architecture in which a robot and a human subject play a language game according to a particular model that has been developed by the software in the course of the interactions. This artificial agent masters the target language system and provides the student with exercises that are adapted to his/her level. The linguistic processing and semantic conceptualization of scenes that are generated for the exercises will be supported by technology that has been developed over the last ten years at the AI lab of the VUB, (Fluid Construction Grammar, Internal Recruitment Language) and is now ready to be used in applied research.

Keywords:Programming, Informatics, Artificial Intelligence, Www

Disciplines:Mathematical sciences and statistics