This paper investigates the linguistic worth of current "chatbot" programs--software programs which attempt to hold a conversation, or interact, in English--as a precursor to their potential as an ESL (English as a second language) learning resource. After some initial background to the development of chatbots, and a discussion of the Loebner…

This paper describes a study of the computer essay-scoring program BETSY. While the use of computers in rating written scripts has been criticised in some quarters for lacking transparency or lack of fit with how human raters rate written scripts, a number of essay rating programs are available commercially, many of which claim to offer comparable…

This paper describes a series of awareness-raising activities for English language secondary school teachers-in-training -- with a view to evaluating future, that is, "intelligent", CALL for English language teaching. The paper first puts the development of CALL applications into perspective (after Atwell, 1999; Warschauer and Healey,…