English speaking practice with conversational AI: Lower secondary students' educational experiences over time

Conversational artificial intelligence enables opportunities for practicing speaking the target language while giving individualized feedback in a low-anxiety environment offered in spoken dialogue systems with conversational agents. In this paper, we present results from a longitudinal study conducted on Swedish lower-secondary students who used a spoken dialogue system as an integrated part of their ordinary English lessons. They interacted orally with embodied conversational agents to solve given tasks in everyday-life scenarios and self-reported their experiences in questionnaires and systematic logbook reflections. Analytical methods were mainly non-parametric tests. Results revealed that the students sustained practicing, socially and emotionally engaged with a slightly positive trend in their educational experience. These insights can inspire teachers and stakeholders in the integration of conversational artificial intelligence in language education and designers in the development of such systems for this age group.