GELLI generates narrative worlds on the fly to learn a language, and beats videos designed by experts

At 40 Japanese learners, this stage generator with characters has fostered a better memory of vocabulary and more confidence than educational videos.

The most effective methods for practising a foreign language are based on narrative situations built around specific objectives, but they require a lot of writing work, which limits the practice to what has been produced in advance. On the contrary, GELLI starts from the learner's objectives to generate, during use, a complete world: situated scenes, characters to converse with, help during the exchange and time for reflection, without any pre-written content.

In a study where each of the 40 Japanese learners tested both approaches, GELLI gave better vocabulary recall and more confidence than videos designed by experts for the same purposes. No significant difference appeared on oral performance, however.

The participants transformed lived or imagined situations into experiences to be shaped. The help available made the experiment reassuring, and the unexpected twists and turns of the story pushed them beyond what they had planned to work on at the beginning.