Last year, Pasadena City College received a grant from the Hewlett Foundation to set up an ESL Robots Website (http://www.eslfast.com/robot/) to help ESL students practice English conversations. The project uses the chat robot technology. Three robots have been created - Hotel, Shopping, and Apartment. The robots are English tutors. Each robot is an expert on that topic, and can answer questions related to that topic intelligently. The robots are really interesting to talk to. They have attracted a lot of ESL instructors and students. There are hundreds of conversation logs recorded each day. I hope you can try it with your students. We need more students to test it. The robots remember every question asked. We're constantly improving robots' responses by checking the conversation logs.

After one-year pilot work, I feel confident to say that it is a very promising project, which may represent the future direction of language learning technology. After the Hewlett Foundation grant ran out, we have been searching for other grants to support the further development of the project. If any of you have any idea of where we should apply for a grant for such a project, please let me know, either by responding to this post, or sending an email directly to me:  leerc8 at gmail.com . Your help will be greatly appreciated. 

Thank you. I am waiting to receive your feedback.

Regards,

Ron Lee
    
Ron C. Lee, Ph.D.
ESL - English as a Second Language
http://www.rong-chang.com/



 
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