  This paper reports the findings of a study conducted on the application of an
on-line human-computer dialog system with natural language (chatbot) on the
teaching of foreign languages. A keywords-based human-computer dialog system
makes it possible that the user could chat with the computer using a natural
language, i.e. in English or in German to some extent. So an experiment has
been made using this system online to work as a chat partner with the users
learning the foreign languages. Dialogs between the users and the chatbot are
collected. Findings indicate that the dialogs between the human and the
computer are mostly very short because the user finds the responses from the
computer are mostly repeated and irrelevant with the topics and context and the
program does not understand the language at all. With analysis of the keywords
or pattern-matching mechanism used in this chatbot it can be concluded that
this kind of system can not work as a teaching assistant program in foreign
language learning.
