Web-services Based Conversational Agent to Encourage Willingness to Communicate in the EFL Context

In this paper, we propose an embodied conversational agent based on the willingness to communicate (WTC) model in L2 to help increase WTC in the context of English as a foreign language (EFL) by providing users with various daily conversation contexts. To simulate realistic and efficient conversations, we adopted a semantic approach in the response generation and created a system with flexible and adaptable domain knowledge, user's intent detection, and mixed-initiative conversation strategy. Our evaluation of the proposed system demonstrated its potential to simulate efficiently natural conversations in a specific context as well as the feasibility of improving learners' WTC using a computer-based environment.