AI technology can offer adult learners of English or multilingual families a supportive, fun and engaging environment in which to learn and practise their English. Schools can play an instrumental role in guiding those families through this process and therefore home-school collaboration is always encouraged. Let’s look at four different ideas for school staff to encourage their multilingual families to engage in an enjoyable language learning experience through AI.
Are you interested in using artificial intelligence for EAL lesson planning?
Role-play (speaking skills)
Parents supporting their EAL children or adult learners of English can utilise AI tools to practise conversational English with interactive chatbots, such as Mizou or others, based on real-life scenarios. Schools can provide families with a list of ideas on role-plays or topics they could talk about (e.g. environmental issues, human relationships etc.) and they can plan for focused practice of speaking and communication skills in a relaxed environment. Answers can be either typed or recorded and the fun begins. For children using chatbots, parental permission is needed and adult supervision is encouraged. These tools can provide detailed feedback to help language learners understand what their next steps are to improve their English. With a detailed prompt, AI can correct learner mistakes or encourage learners to enrich their language by giving them specific examples.
Here is an example of a prompt to help learners plan an interactive speaking activity with a chatbot, starting by giving AI a specific role and outlining a structure for the conversation learners will engage in:
You are a friendly English tutor. The student is an A2 CEFR level learner eager to practise speaking about their achievements. You will engage in a dialogue about their experiences over the past year, focusing on using past tense of present perfect. Encourage the student to share stories and provide instant feedback to enhance their confidence and speaking skills.
For learners who need a smooth transition from using their own language to using English, AI technology allows for instant translation from their own language into English. Tools, such as Audiopen.ai, allow users to record their voices (parental permission is needed for children using these tools) talking in their home language on a particular topic and instantly transcribe their spoken language into a neat and organised text in English. These tools usually support a variety of languages, allowing multilingual families to learn English while using their native language as a bridge.
Summarise and edit texts (reading or writing skills)
English language learners can leverage AI technology to adapt texts to suit their level or needs. They can summarise long texts, edit them to change their style and practise with tailor-made reading comprehension questions. For example, chatGPT can summarise a specific text, book chapter or story, adapt or simplify it to match certain levels of proficiency and also create text comprehension quizzes with their answers.
Text-to-speech technology (listening skills)
Finally, teachers can encourage a multimodal approach to learning by sharing a list of fiction or non-fiction short texts related to the school curriculum or texts of general interest enhancing world knowledge, which parents can copy and paste into a text-to-speech AI tool, such as Natural Reader or others. AI will read the text out to them or their children and help both practise pronunciation and/or listening skills in a fun environment. Both adults and children can benefit from this activity. Ideas on texts to be used vary depending on the audience and include school newsletters for parents, stories for children and magazine articles for adult language learners.
For more ideas on how to improve your English using AI, click the download button to get our guide for multilingual families or adult learners of English.
