CONVERSATIONS WITH SIRI: ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES IN THE POST-HUMAN SPECTRUM

DR HEATHER LOTHERINGTON PROFESSOR, MULTILINGUAL EDUCATION YORK UNIVERSITY, TORONTO HLOTHERINGTON@EDU.YORKU.CA

BIT’s 4th annual world congress of emerging info-tech-2015, 18-20 April, 2015 Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Centre, Shenzhen, China

https://www.facebook.com/posthuman.literacies

LANGUAGE IS HUMAN, RIGHT?

• Ferdinand de Saussure: Cours de linguistique générale, circa 1915

OR DO WE ENGAGE IN LINGUISTIC ACTIVITY BEYOND OUR SPECIES?

DIGITAL MEDIATION IN EVERYDAY COMMUNICATION

• Kanzi’s communication is complexly mediated: he hears (English) language via a female human which he processes while playing a digital game.

DIGITAL MEDIATION IN EVERYDAY COMMUNICATION

• Spoken communication is now mediated through digital channels that change how, when, where, why, and with whom we communicate.

COMMUNICATION VIA DIGITAL DEVICES

• Indeed much communication is mediated through digital devices…

• look familiar?

HOW ARE MOBILE DIGITAL DEVICES BEING USED EDUCATIONALLY?

• How is the manifest infusion of mobile digital devices affecting educational practice?

• 2014 Mindshare edtech Canadian teacher survey

• Less that half the school districts surveyed had a BYOD policy

• The devices in predominant use are established digital technologies

• The programs in most evidence are text-based, and teacher-driven

• In everyday life, we communicate with other humans and their literate products via multiple layers of mediation—often at the same time: multitasking with multimedia.

DIGITALLY-MEDIATED HUMAN COMMUNICATION

• At the other end of the multiply mediated communication is one of more humans: an author, a speaker, an audio or video- taped address…

DIGITALLY-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION WITH NONHUMANS?

• Sophisticated voice-activated help programs using speech recognition and human voice interfaces are rapidly entering our communicative spaces.

Eve (Voice Answer)

USING VOICE-ACTIVATED SYSTEMS FOR LEARNING AND PRACTICING ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE

• The need to speak English (in this case) recognizably, and the search engine’s ability to comprehend a range of accents make Siri and other voice activated assistants useful sites for learners of English to practice using English.

• Are voice-activated assistants being used in English classes at present?

English language teachers - Please take a few minutes to fill out our very short survey on mobile devices and voice activated assistants in ELT! https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/G8JK3QS

MOBILE DEVICES AND VOICE ACTIVATED ASSISTANTS IN ELT

• Do you use applications (apps) to teach English?

• wordweb, radio, engrade, popplet, nearpod, quizlet, evernote, polleverywhere

• Do you use any voice-activated apps to teach English?

• voicethread, soundcloud → auditory function, not interactivity

• Not a single English language teacher or learner was interactively accessing voice-activated assistants to learn or practice English.

Who … or what … are you talking to?

DO YOU USE VOICE-ACTIVATED SYSTEMS?

• Sat nav system (GPS) for driving?

• Voice activated searches, using assistants such as Siri or Cortana?

COMMUNICATION IN THE POST-HUMAN SPECTRUM

• Fiction: Hal

THE STORY OF SIRI’S VOICE

• “I recorded the vocabulary that became the basis for Siri in July of 2005, four hours a day, five days a week, for the whole month. It was very, very tedious stuff because we were reading phrases and sentences that were created solely to get the maximum number of sound combinations in the language – so the sentences were kind of odd. Then, there’s a process called concatenation: the technicians extract sound combinations – vowels, consonants, diphthongs, syllables – and put them back together in their own reconstructed phrases and sentences … Siri … was the first concatenated voice that sounded almost human.” (Susan Bennett, voice of Siri)

COMMUNICATION IN THE POST-HUMAN SPECTRUM

• Fact: Echo

SIRI, CAN YOU HELP ME TO LEARN ENGLISH?

• Mobile-assisted language learning can be used for self-access, and for class use.

• Voice-activation is an incentive for learners to make themselves clear to a machine who will never get short-tempered at the same question.

A WORLD OF POSSIBILITY?

beginner

intermediate

advanced

AND THANK YOU :) ��

HLOTHERINGTON@EDU.YORKU.CA

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