Moin Berta!: Ai chatterbot for practicing basic speaking in German language

Nur Syafiqa Natasha Mohd Paudzi

Abstract

The project aims to develop an app that encourages students to practice their third language outside the classroom. The Moin, Berta! Mobile App is developed as the solution to enable students who learn German to practice their speaking skills with a chatbot named Berta. Mobile learning, specifically its branches called Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) is applied on the mobile app. The methodology used to develop the mobile app is Evolutionary Prototyping (EP). The flexibility offered by that specific methodology allowed changes to be made throughout the development process. The requirements for the mobile app are collected in the Initial Requirement phase. 16 respondents, consisting of 14 university students and two high school students were involved. Value Proposition Canvas (VP Canvas) is used for the requirements analysis to identify suitable features. There are six pains and six gains were identified during the analysis, for which seven pain relievers and six gain creators were proposed for the app features. To develop the mobile app, Android Studio and Dialogflow were used. The functions in the mobile app can be divided into three categories, general, specific, and side functions. Other than the chatbot, other function includes basic German notes with audio for specific German words. After the mobile app development was completed, the System Usability Scale (SUS) was conducted to evaluate the app’s usability and functional testing is done. As a result, the app scored an A (83.9%) on the SUS test. Results also show that students are attracted to using chatterbot as their partners in practising their speaking skills in the German language. In a conclusion, we developed a suitable app that can help students practice their German outside of the classroom whenever they want. We hope that every student will be encouraged to take German as their third language.

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