In the previous article, we explored how to use Doubao AI as an intelligent growth partner to help children improve their writing skills. Today, we will continue this theme and further explore how to leverage Doubao AI to create a personalized English learning companion, making children’s English learning more vivid and interesting.
First, Why Create an English Training Companion?
In today’s globalized world, the importance of English as an international language is self-evident. Mastering English not only helps children broaden their horizons but also provides more opportunities for their future. However, traditional English learning often exceeds parents’ capabilities, either due to a lack of time, teaching skills, or having long forgotten their own English lessons, making it challenging to guide their children. Therefore, extracurricular English classes or private tutoring have become the best solutions for children learning English.
With such excellent models, can they serve as alternatives to English training classes? The answer is yes. If parents can fine-tune the model themselves, they can generate a better companion tailored to their child’s English proficiency, setting specific learning goals and purposes. At this point, an intelligent English training partner can not only teach English and engage in practice and conversation with the child but also accompany them in their growth.
Secondly, How Can Doubao AI Be a Great Helper for English Learning?
Fundamentally, Doubao has a vast knowledge base, capable of providing assistance and guidance in listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translating.
Doubao AI’s language understanding and generation capabilities are sufficiently powerful for English learning. For preschool and primary school students, it can understand students’ non-standard English expressions and generate various learning materials such as dialogues, exercises, and stories, with results that are generally satisfactory. Learning English with Doubao might be less meticulously designed than carefully crafted English courses, but it excels in creating good practice scenarios and providing readily available exercises.
Ultimately, whether it’s vocabulary learning, grammar practice, or spoken dialogue, Doubao AI can provide a personalized and interactive learning experience. The voice input and output capabilities of Doubao, especially for English output, are very close to human pronunciation, optimizing the learning experience.
Practical use has shown that a custom intelligent companion based on Doubao can become a powerful assistant for children learning English, reaching a usable and comparable level.
Preparation Work: Starting to Create an English Training Companion
Similar to the previous case, the preparation for creating an intelligent companion requires us to clarify what kind of companion we need. In this case, the goal is to create a tool that can serve as an alternative to English extracurricular tutoring classes.
Generally speaking, the ‘learning’ component in extracurricular tutoring classes should outweigh the ‘interest’ component. Therefore, we still need to introduce a basic learning process framework. Learning is a gradual process, so we need to allow the intelligent companion to continuously update the user’s current English level during interactions, then focus on goals, teaching content, and activities accordingly.
Here is an example of a learning process framework:
Beginner Stage:
Goals: Familiarize with English letters and basic pronunciation rules, master basic vocabulary and simple greetings.
Teaching Content: Pronunciation of the 26 English letters, basic vocabulary (such as colors, numbers, family members, etc.), basic greetings and daily expressions.
Teaching Activities: Letter writing practice, simple vocabulary card games, role-playing (such as greetings, self-introduction).
Basic Stage:
Goals: Expand vocabulary, learn basic grammar, and be able to conduct simple conversations.
Teaching Content: Common vocabulary and phrases, basic grammar rules (such as noun plurals, verb tenses, etc.).
Teaching Activities: Vocabulary spelling competitions, fill-in-the-blank exercises, simple conversation practice, basic grammar exercises.
Intermediate Stage:
Goals: Improve listening and speaking skills, learn more complex grammatical structures, and be able to engage in daily communication.
Teaching Content: Intermediate vocabulary, complex sentence structures, use of tenses and voices, basic listening comprehension skills.
Teaching Activities: Listening exercises (such as listening to stories and answering questions), role-playing (more complex scenarios), reading comprehension (short articles or stories), translation exercises (simple sentences or paragraphs).
Advanced Stage:
Goals: Be able to understand and use English for basic communication in academic or professional fields, mastering advanced grammar and vocabulary.
Teaching Content: Academic vocabulary, advanced grammar (such as passive voice, conditional sentences, etc.), complex listening materials, and basic writing skills.
Teaching Activities: Academic topic discussions, advanced listening exercises (such as news, lectures), reading comprehension (longer articles or reports), writing practices (such as letters, diaries, short essays).
Additionally, in terms of learning methods, we hope the large model can consider the three aspects of learning, practice, and assessment to reinforce learning outcomes.
Here is what we consider the most important part: defining the operational logic of the intelligent companion, which is also the difference between the intelligent companion and the native Doubao. For a basic knowledge point, the Doubao app can provide answers, but when defining the intelligent companion, we may want its response style, content, and desired outcomes to differ. Therefore, we need to define these first and then use prompts to enable the large model to role-play.
Of course, if this large model is only used by one person, we can define much more refined conditions, such as limiting the content to middle school level and setting a word count limit, which can yield more satisfactory results.
Tool Preparation: Coze Is Here
In the previous case, we directly used the Doubao app as an assistant. The Doubao app can also directly generate intelligent companions, and the method is relatively simple:
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Download and Install Doubao: First, you need to search for and download the Doubao app from your phone’s app store, or visit the Doubao official website to use it.
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Register and Log In: Register an account using your phone number and log in to start using it.
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Create an Intelligent Companion: In the ‘Create’ section of Doubao AI, you can create a companion focused on English learning assistance based on your needs.
In the third step, just input our requirements for the intelligent companion, and it’s basically ready. However, in this article, we introduce a new tool: Coze.
Coze is a next-generation AI large model intelligent companion development platform. It integrates a large model engine, plugins, long and short-term memory, workflows, cards, and other rich capabilities, helping users quickly build personalized or commercially valuable intelligent companions with low barriers and publish them on platforms like Doubao and Feishu.
Through the Coze platform, users can quickly create various types of chatbots (Chat Bots) regardless of their programming background. Users can define the character and response logic of the bot to make answers more accurate; they can also add plugins to expand the bot’s capabilities, such as executing code, generating images from text, etc.; the workflow feature can turn multiple operations into nodes, allowing for custom processes and viewing results.
In summary, the Coze platform is a powerful custom intelligent companion platform, much more complex than using the Doubao app, but with significantly stronger customization capabilities. Those interested in this tool can further study the “official tutorial of Coze.”
Coze is only available on the web,
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Navigate to “www.coze.cn”, register using your phone number, and log in.
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Click the “Create Bot” button in the upper left corner; here, the Bot is an intelligent companion, fill in the relevant information:
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Now, we enter the intelligent companion’s editing page.
Practical Case: Generating an English Learning Intelligent Companion
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Select the engine on the arrangement interface; considering that the response content may be quite lengthy, we choose the Moonshot128K engine.
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In the “Character and Response Logic” box, enter the following prompts:
# Role
You are a friendly and patient Chinese primary and secondary school English teacher, dedicated to gradually improving students' English proficiency through scientific methods.
## Skills
### Skill 1: English Proficiency Assessment
1. Design a series of simple questions to quickly and accurately assess students' English proficiency.
2. Use tools to assist in evaluation, ensuring results are accurate and objective.
### Skill 2: Tailored Teaching
1. Customize teaching goals, content, and activities based on the student's English learning stage (beginner, basic, intermediate, advanced).
- Beginner Stage:
- Goals: Familiarize with English letters and basic pronunciation rules, master basic vocabulary and simple greetings.
- Teaching Content: Pronunciation of the 26 English letters, basic vocabulary (such as colors, numbers, family members, etc.), basic greetings and daily expressions.
- Teaching Activities: Letter writing practice, fun vocabulary card games, role-playing (such as greetings, self-introduction).
- Basic Stage:
- Goals: Expand vocabulary, learn basic grammar, and conduct simple conversations.
- Teaching Content: Common vocabulary and phrases, basic grammar rules (such as noun plurals, verb tenses, etc.).
- Teaching Activities: Vocabulary spelling competitions, fill-in-the-blank exercises, daily conversation training, basic grammar exercises.
- Intermediate Stage:
- Goals: Improve listening and speaking skills, proficiently use complex grammatical structures, and engage in daily communication.
- Teaching Content: Intermediate vocabulary, complex sentence structures, use of tenses and voices, basic listening comprehension skills.
- Teaching Activities: Listening training (such as listening to stories and answering questions), complex scenario role-playing, reading comprehension (short articles or stories), translation exercises (simple sentences or paragraphs).
- Advanced Stage:
- Goals: Conduct basic English communication in academic or professional fields, master advanced grammar and vocabulary.
- Teaching Content: Academic vocabulary, advanced grammar (such as passive voice, conditional sentences, etc.), complex listening materials, basic writing skills.
- Teaching Activities: Academic topic discussions, advanced listening exercises (such as news, lectures), deep reading comprehension (longer articles or reports), writing practices (such as letters, diaries, short essays).
### Skill 3: Reinforcement
1. Organize learning following the learn, practice, and assess process for each English knowledge point.
2. Arrange multiple reviews for knowledge points not mastered during assessments.
3. Encourage students to use the Feynman learning technique to explain the learned knowledge to you or their parents.
## Constraints
1. Focus on teaching content within the primary and secondary school English scope.
2. Remind students to take breaks after studying for more than 40 minutes.
3. Maintain a friendly and encouraging attitude, motivating students to learn actively.
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Set Voice
For English learning, listening and speaking are very important practices, and on the Coze platform, we can configure the voice.
In the middle settings area, scroll to the bottom to find “Role” and “Voice,” where we can define both Chinese and English voices.
The Chinese voice can be chosen freely based on preference, but for the English voice, some voices are very clear, especially female voices, with a slower speed suitable for beginners. Other voices may be less clear and faster, which might be better suited for students with higher English proficiency. Here, we choose Julia, a female voice, as her slower speed and clear pronunciation are likely to meet the needs of most students in primary and secondary school.
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Publish the Intelligent Companion
On the far right of the editing page, there is a “Preview and Debug” area that parents can choose to use as needed.
In the upper right corner of the page, there is a “Publish” button. Click it, enter some information, and you can publish the intelligent companion. We have also published this intelligent companion and selected both the Coze platform and Doubao platform. Thus, by searching for “Little Doubao – English Assistant” in the Doubao app, you can find the English learning intelligent companion developed in this article. We have also opened the prompts, so on the Coze platform, searching for “Little Doubao – English Assistant” will allow you to quickly copy this intelligent companion to your own space, enabling parents to customize it further based on our foundation, creating a more targeted and interactive intelligent companion.
Extended Features: Creating a Personalized English Learning Intelligent Companion
A public intelligent companion, if aimed at many people, can only consider prompts that are suitable for everyone. However, for parents, customizing an intelligent companion for their child achieves the goal. Therefore, parents can also add more operational logic to the intelligent companion to better match their child’s needs.
Commonly, the following definitions can be added:
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Vocabulary Learning: Set a vocabulary bank that can provide a daily vocabulary learning plan based on the child’s learning progress.
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Grammar Practice: Generate various grammar practice questions based on English grammar rules to help the child reinforce their grammar knowledge.
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Spoken Dialogue: Simulate real conversation scenarios to engage in English speaking practice with the child, improving their speaking skills.
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Personalized Feedback: Provide personalized learning feedback and suggestions based on the child’s learning performance.
Best Practices: How to Use Doubao AI for English Speaking Practice
Both Doubao and Coze platforms are currently free to use, and their functionalities are continuously increasing, making them a good choice for DIYing a personalized intelligent companion.
However, Doubao and Coze platforms also have their limitations; for example, they are based on dialogue, so if one only wants to listen without speaking, the learning process becomes difficult. Additionally, they cannot actively manage students’ attention like a teacher or arrange each lesson’s learning steps and specific content. Conversely, they are more suitable for students who are proactive in learning. In such cases, discussing topics like “How to learn English?” or “The effective process of learning English,” as done in the section “Preparation Work: Starting to Create an English Training Companion,” can greatly enhance learning outcomes.
To have the intelligent companion provide content that meets expectations better, you can guide it from the following aspects:
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Context: I am learning daily conversational English and need to practice self-introduction.
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Goals: I need to be guided to introduce myself in English and receive feedback.
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Style: Please use a relaxed, encouraging conversational style. (Please use the IELTS examiner’s conversational style.)
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Audience: I am a beginner in learning English.
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Response: Please explain this question again in Chinese. (In English, please create a multiple-choice question, fill-in-the-blank question.)
In other words, during the conversation process, it is also important to actively inform the intelligent companion of the response requirements from different aspects.
Conclusion
Learning Society has previously recommended another English learning tool, Microsoft Write, which has a stronger teaching connotation. If you want to follow textbook difficulty requirements, especially for practicing English writing, Microsoft Write is a better option.
However, if there isn’t a strong learning goal, providing an interactive and interesting learning environment for children not only enhances their interest in learning but also helps them more efficiently acquire English knowledge. Thus, using this intelligent companion is a better choice. Since there are no restrictions on conversational content, children can engage in imaginative chats with the intelligent companion, envisioning it as a “foreigner” living in a different country, which makes the English conversation much more engaging.
We wish parents success and happiness in creating their intelligent companions. What else can we do with Doubao AI to enhance learning capabilities?Stay tuned for the next article!