CSIEC: A computer assisted English learning chatbot based on textual knowledge and reasoning

CSIEC (Computer Simulation in Educational Communication) system with newly developed multiple functions for English instruction still focuses on supplying a virtual chatting partner (chatbot), which can chat in English with the English learners anytime anywhere. It generates communicative response according to the user input, the dialogue context, the user's and its own personality knowledge, common sense knowledge, and inference knowledge. All these kinds of knowledge are expressed in the form of NLML, an annotation language for natural language text. These NLMLs can either be automatically obtained through parsing the text, or be easily authored with the help of GUI editors designed by LIS. So the CSIEC system suggests a naive approach of logical reasoning and inference directly through syntactical and semantic analysis of textual knowledge. This approach has advantages over the old ELIZA-like keywords matching mechanism. The chatting log summarization of free Internet usage within six months demonstrates this advantage. In this paper, we present the system architecture and underlying technologies, and the educational application results. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.