The rise of chatbots – new personal assistants in foreign language learning

The creation and training of a smart conversational agent has long been a dream of the human race and a huge challenge for scientists and programmers. Until recently, it was still just a dream. However, state-of-the-art technologies, like deep learning and neural networks, give language teachers a new hope, providing them with smart chatbots able to learn through communication just like humans. Today, the availability of chatbots helps to create a new educational scenario for foreign language learners. It suits well their fast-paced lives, allowing multitasking and making the work of ESL educators a lot easier and a way more effective. In that way chatbots could represent one of the basic components of microlearning.