A Conversational Agent for Mobile Assisted Language Learning: CPIAbot as a tool for learning Italian as a second language

Learning the language of the host country is one of the most important aspects of social inclusion for adult migrants. Within the migrant population in Italy, it is possible to find a high heterogeneity of language profiles, which differ in level of competence and degree of literacy. This phenomenon is reflected in the composition of the classrooms of the Provincial Centers for Adult Education (CPIA), educational institutions that offer courses of Italian as a second language to adult migrants. To meet the needs identified in a preliminary survey in two CPIAs, a conversational technology was developed: CPIAbot. The system is a multimodal and multi-level chatbot, whose ecosystem is Telegram, to support both the communicative teaching in the classroom and the autonomous learning of CPIA students. For the implementation of the designed innovations, embedded in the technology, an ad-hoc system was developed, integrating a dialog-manager (NaifJs), capable of managing multi-turn dialogues, and other different solutions for the communication with external services, aimed to the management of multi-channel interactions. The contribution, therefore, will describe the technological solutions adopted, insisting on their link with the linguistic needs that have emerged from the context.