Miguel Mision

After too long of a hiatus, we are happy to announce our next event coming this June. Once again featuring our local talent, this time our very own Chapter President.

Date: 6/16, Sunday, 15-17:00
Location: Online
Fee: Free
Registration: https://forms.gle/DM7uLGy9oTpAVNWb8

Abstract

XReading has become a popular platform for many ESL educators to conduct extensive reading in their classes. The convenience and accessibility of XReading can and continues to provide an enjoyable reading (and also listening) experience for students all over the world. From personal experience however, there are issues that arise with the use of XReading. The cost which can be prohibitive for some students and institutions, reading material that does not suit readers’ interests (Collett, 2018, Sartika 2020), and the ‘gamification’ of the experience with quizzes and metrics – which can obfuscate the experience of reading. Howarth and Bollen (2019) found in their research that of the 730 second year university students introduced to XReading, only half were interested in continuing it after a semester.

What if instead of micromanaging the minutiae of reading rates, accuracy, and comprehension – students were given an opportunity to read things they were genuinely interested in. Leaning into the original goal of extensive reading – that being reading for pleasure. For this project students were asked what types of material they were interested in reading. Then the researcher used ChatGPT and Dall-E to create graded readers for the students.
This research set out to answer the following questions:

1. Can AI generated graded readers improve students motivation in reading English?
2. Will students notice a difference if graded readers were written by AI?
3. Can students enjoy reading AI generated graded readers?

This presentation will be divided into three parts:
– A brief overview of AI, Large Language Models and the current state of Generative AI.
– An overview of the research project.
– A workshop on how graded readers were created using AI.

Bio
Miguel did his undergraduate in engineering and international studies with a major in Japanese at the University of Technology, Sydney. Once upon a time he was an engineer and worked for Toshiba Corp in Australia. He came to Japan in 2009 and worked as an ALT teaching all levels from kindergarten to high school to corporate. Miguel has an MA in Education majoring in TESOL with the University of Wollongong. His research interests include both Computer Assisted Language Learning and Extensive Reading.