@inproceedings{brixey-traum-2025-code,
    title = "Does a code-switching dialogue system help users learn conversational fluency in {C}hoctaw?",
    author = "Brixey, Jacqueline  and
      Traum, David",
    editor = "Mager, Manuel  and
      Ebrahimi, Abteen  and
      Pugh, Robert  and
      Rijhwani, Shruti  and
      Von Der Wense, Katharina  and
      Chiruzzo, Luis  and
      Coto-Solano, Rolando  and
      Oncevay, Arturo",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on NLP for Indigenous Languages of the Americas (AmericasNLP)",
    month = may,
    year = "2025",
    address = "Albuquerque, New Mexico",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/fix-sig-urls/2025.americasnlp-1.2/",
    pages = "8--17",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-236-7",
    abstract = "We investigate the learning outcomes and user response to a chatbot for practicing conversational Choctaw, an endangered American Indigenous language. Conversational fluency is a goal for many language learners, however, for learners of endangered languages in North America, access to fluent speakers may be limited. Chatbots are potentially ideal dialogue partners as this kind of dialogue system fulfills a non-authoritative role by focusing on carrying on a conversation as an equal conversational partner. The goal of the chatbot investigated in this work is to serve as a conversational partner in the absence of a fluent Choctaw-speaking human interlocutor. We investigate the impact of code-switching in the interaction, comparing a bilingual chatbot against a monolingual Choctaw version. We evaluate the systems for user engagement and enjoyment, as well as gains in conversational fluency from interacting with the system."
}