AMICA: An Adaptive Mobile Application for the Learning of Academic English with Pedagogical Agents
The mastery of academic English at tertiary levels is undeniably pivotal in ensuring students’ progress and success. Its importance is due to the number of academic materials that students need to refer to and they are largely published in English. In teaching academic English, however, lecturers...
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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Proceeding |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/40408/1/AMICA%20An%20Adaptive%20Mobile%20Application%20for%20the%20Learning%20of%20Academic.pdf http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/40408/ http://www.cade.upm.edu.my/ |
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| Summary: | The mastery of academic English at tertiary levels is undeniably pivotal in ensuring students’
progress and success. Its importance is due to the number of academic materials that students
need to refer to and they are largely published in English. In teaching academic English,
however, lecturers tend to face problems in providing sustainable guidance and meaningful
feedback to the students. Hence, this project proposes a viable solution by introducing a mobile
application that could be used to as a tool for students to independently learn academic
English. The Adaptive Mobile Interactive Coach for Academic English (or known as AMICA)
is a mobile application equipped with interactive pedagogical agents that would constantly
guide students in academic reading and writing. In the reading module, they would be able to
learn the proper strategies to read journal papers and academic materials through the
adaptive and interactive assistance provided by the virtual agent or coach. As for the writing
module, they would be able to obtain feedback from the AMICA app on the more accurate
way of expressing ideas academically, especially in terms of using academic words and
sentence structure. The AMICA app has been piloted on 35 undergraduate students and the
outcomes from the test are encouraging. A majority of the students considered it as effective
since they treat it like a virtual friend that guides them without the need to disturb their
lecturers constantly. It also motivates them to master academic English as the AMICA app was
designed to be engaging and interesting rather than the typical lecture-style delivery of the
subject. Further improvements will be made to the AMICA app before it is publicly released. |
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