Students that are under 18 can only participate in chats created within a class space. Teachers control their class space and choose who to grant access to. Teachers add students by sharing a private class code or link. This works in very much the same way as Google Classroom. The chats in the class space are not monitored, and users on the platform are not vetted by Pangea Chat given teachers are in control of who their students are interacting with.

An exception to this is, students who are 18 years of age or older can access a space to find conversation partners (other students who are 18+). Here, users can direct message each other outside the Class space.

Yes, currently users can choose to block other users. They can do so by clicking on the user’s name and choosing Block from the options that are shown. A user can see a list of users they have blocked by going to Menu Options > Settings > Security > Blocked Users.

Translation and definitions do pretty well with informal speech and slang given they are trained using the breadth of language use across the internet, which includes these forms. However, we cannot guarantee that we can accommodate all slang and informal speech, especially newer and more recent slang. New informal speech and slang are developed everyday, and it takes time to update machine learning systems. We believe the benefits of student-driven conversation practice (which is facilitated by machine translation and definition) outweigh the potential issues and, as general research and development continues, strategies for incorporating slang and informal speech will improve.

Teachers and students can tailor the learning tools to fit the specific needs and goals of their class/activity.

The language tools are designed to give students suggestions without forcing students to accept the corrections. Students can choose to ignore grammar, spelling, and punctuation corrections. Further, these are offered before messages are sent, allowing students to engage with them (or not), privately.

These tools can also be turned off entirely. Teachers can turn off the Interactive Translator, Interactive Grammar Checker, Language Toggle, and Dictionary Pop-up Cards for all students in a Class space in Class Settings. Students can choose to turn them off in private, 1-1 messages or messages with Conversation Partners by going to Settings > Learning Settings.

*Class Settings will override student’s individual settings in Class spaces.

Teachers can see what students send if they are a member of the chat. If teachers have given students permission to create 1-1 chats or group chats in the class, a teacher would not be able to see the messages in those chats unless students invite them to those chats. However, a teacher will get data on learning and engagement in those chats in the Class Analytics space.

If a teacher needs to see a student’s chat but does not want to be in the chat, chats can be downloaded as a .txt file that can be turned in to the teacher.

Yes! Teachers can turn off the Interactive Translator, Interactive Grammar Checker, Language Toggle, and Dictionary Pop-up Cards for all students in a Class space in Class Settings. Students can choose to turn them off in private, 1-1 messages or messages with Conversation Partners by going to Settings > Learning Settings.

*Class Settings will override student’s individual settings in Class spaces.

Per a “vocal feature,” currently, users can send audio messages in Pangea Chat. We are working on implementing feedback on audio messages.

Users can also use speech to text which can be a great way to “confirm pronunciation” (e.g. if a student pronounces the words correctly, the text that shows up should match what they want to say; if it does not show up as they wanted, it would imply their pronunciation is somehow off).

Regarding the concern about a “text-based chat,” while we know that a text-based chat application is not enough to provide everything a learner needs to be proficient in a language, it serves an important role in language development.

Research shows that texting can be used to help students improve:
grammar (Moghari & Marandi, 2017),
vocabulary (Li, Cummins, & Deng, 2017),
reading and writing (Hazea & Alzubi, 2016), and
speaking (Jones, 2023; Namaziandost et al., 2022)

It is important to also note that Pangea Chat has been designed with the intention of offering a safe, low-risk, high support environment for beginner learners, allowing them to gain the foundational knowledge and confidence in their target language to, then, move into more high-risk, spontaneous oral language practice and production.

Pangea Chat has been designed specifically with beginner learners in mind and offers several tools to help students produce and understand their target language.

If students write entirely in their base language, the Interactive Translator helps them rewrite in their target language. Within the interactive translation flow, students are given a range of choices – they are never expected to put in or generate their own answer (although they can add one if they’d like to). As they make their choices, they can long-click on each option to get more information, such as a contextual definition, to help them make the correct choice.

Once a student has sent and/or received a message, they can use the Language Toggle to see messages in their base language if they absolutely cannot understand it in their target language yet.

We are working on the ability to set the level of formality that a user wants to use, practice, and learn as they message within the platform. At the moment, a user could use informal text message abbreviations in the app, but would likely not be suggested those abbreviations in the Interactive Translation or Interactive Grammar Checker interactions.

For example, a user can write “Kiero ir x una gaseosa.” and the message will be sent through without any errors being detected. If a student clicked on “x” for a contextual definition, they would see: In this context, “x” is used as an abbreviation for “por” which translates to “for” in English. So, while the system is not actively teaching text message abbreviations, they could be taught in class and then practiced on Pangea Chat.

In the same way, if a student is engaging in conversation with a conversational partner who happens to be a native Spanish speaker, for example, that uses these common informal, text abbreviations, they would also get that exposure while getting language support from Pangea Chat to understand any new abbreviations.

Pangea Chat does not explicitly distinguish between different language varieties. Words or patterns of speech specific to a language variety are supported in different ways depending on the language learning tool.

The Interactive Grammar Checker is trained using digitized text. If a word form or variety is represented “somewhere on the internet” then it was likely in the datasets used to train the system, and will likely be considered grammatically correct.

The translation tools will present the most common translation, averaged across all language varieties. This means that the mostly widely used way of expressing something will be supported, potentially under-representing more uncommon varieties. However, if a student uses a less common variety when producing a message, it should not be marked as incorrect. This means, any less common varieties can be actively used and practiced on Pangea Chat, they may just not be suggested through the translation tools at this moment.

The word definition tool does well identifying words across language varieties and, if a word is more common within a specific variety, this may be mentioned.

Within the platform, we do not actively filter out inappropriate language or profanity. We began designing a profanity filter within Pangea Chat; however, we realized (along with our Board of Teachers):

1) We were filtering out things we did not want to filter out
2) Many words can be considered inappropriate or profane to use in certain geographical areas or contexts, but not in others. One example of many is the word “cuca” in Spanish. In Colombia it is inappropriate, but in some Central American countries it is used to refer to roaches.

Currently, teachers can remove messages from a chat if they find them inappropriate, and students can report messages in private, 1-1 messages or group chats as offensive.

Within the platform, we do not actively filter out inappropriate language or profanity. We began designing a profanity filter within Pangea Chat; however, we realized (along with our Board of Teachers) that we were filtering out things we did not want to filter out.

Many words can be considered inappropriate or profane to use in certain geographical areas or contexts, but not in others. One example of many is the word “cuca” in Spanish. In Colombia it is inappropriate, but in some Central American countries it is used to refer to roaches. Another example, can be found in discussions about human sexuality, which may or may not be appropriate given the class setting. Ultimately creating a “one size fits all” profanity filter wasn’t feasible, but we’re continuing to explore options for automatic moderation which would flag unacceptable content (hate speech, violence, harassment, etc) to their respective teachers, so they can decide what action to take in response.

Currently, teachers can remove messages from a chat if they find them inappropriate and students can report messages in private 1-1 or group chats as offensive.

Pangea Chat is all about human to human interactions. It was designed to help both teachers and students by giving them language superpowers to facilitate authentic, human to human, conversation practice in the target language. It is meant to be a tool that allows students, especially beginners, to jump into real conversations in their target language much quicker than they would be able to without the superpowers of Pangea Chat. It also helps teachers save time and provide personalized feedback and support to students during interactions in ways not often possible during communicative tasks in the classroom. The superpowers Pangea Chat provides comes from the unique AI-powered tools we created for students and teachers.

For students, these tools uniquely empower them by meeting them where they are in their language learning journey, allowing them to take what they need and ignore what they don’t. For example, with interactive translation, a beginner student can use their base language to write a message they are unsure of how to write in their target language. The Interactive Translator doesn’t just tell students what to say (like many online translators) but, rather, teaches them how to say it by guiding students through a flow of decision-making that fosters critical thinking about language choices as they construct their final message. The Interactive Grammar Checker, on the other hand, can help students who are able to write messages in their target language but who may still struggle with errors. Together with the Language Toggle (helps students understand received messages) and Dictionary Pop-up Cards (supports comprehension of new and unknown words), students can find everything they need to engage in meaningful, authentic conversation practice in ways not possible on any other platform at the current moment.

For teachers, Pangea Chat offers them the chance to provide students with personalized, immediate, and constant feedback on their language production in qualities, quantities, and timeframes that are impossible for teachers to give during classroom communicative tasks. Pangea Chat is providing feedback to students during and after the construction of messages as well as helping them understand what their peers are saying to them through these AI-powered learning tools. Pangea Chat is also providing a way for teachers to incorporate communicative language teaching into the classroom in a unique way that allows students to engage in something they love (texting) while learning a language through absolutely any topic they can imagine as the learning is completely guided by the content of students’ conversations on the platform.

All of that being said, Pangea Chat doesn’t aim to replace teachers or students but empower them with unique teaching and learning superpowers as they engage in communication and reach new levels of proficiency in their target language.

In regards to the Interactive Translator, the app establishes a baseline “correct” translation from a reliable underlying translation model. The user is then evaluated based on how “close” they got to that correct translation by using state-of-the-art sentence embedding neural networks to achieve a measure of “semantic similarity.” The percentage correct is a calculation of the semantic similarity between the translation the student has created via their choices in the interactive translation activity and the baseline “correct” translation.

Within the platform, students will be mainly talking with classmates from their language class. The teacher will create a class space and invite their students to join the space. Then, through teacher or student created chats, students will chat with each other.

The chats can be organized in an variety of ways for a nearly infinite number of activities such as pre-task activities (for example, a pre-speaking task done in class to get students ready for a main speaking task), main task activities (for example, a communicative task done in pairs or small groups in or outside class), post-task activity (for example, a post-reading discussion), or for things like exit ticket activities, open, student-led discussions, reflections, or even in-class questions. The options really are endless!

The only cases in which a student would be speaking to someone they don’t know would be if they find a conversation partner (available for students 18 years of age or older) or if they chat with the Pangea Bot (available for a limited number of messages each day).

Right now, the app is designed for use within educational contexts in which students would be speaking to other classmates (through Class spaces created by teachers) or conversation partners they find (available to students 18 and older).

Yes! Teachers can turn off the Interactive Translator, the Interactive Grammar Checker, access to Dictionary pop-up cards, and the Language Toggle in Class Settings while students can choose to turn them off in private, 1-1 messages or messages with Conversation Partners by going to Settings > Learning Settings.

*Class Settings will override student’s individual settings in Class spaces.

In regards to the Interactive Translator (IT), feedback is presented to the user during the activity and at the end of the translation activity (all before the message is actually sent)
During the interactive translation flow, the user is provided with a coloring system for each of their individual choices. A “green” choice in the IT flow means that the Pangea Chat system thinks the choice is correct. A “yellow” choice means that the system is not confident about its prediction, and the choice may or may not be correct; in this case, the user is encouraged to be creative! A “red” choice means that the system is confident that choice would lead to a poor translation. At any point, the user can also choose to get a contextual definition for each of the choices within the flow. The contextual definition utilizes a large language model to describe the potential meaning of a given choice within the context of the original meaning. If the choice doesn’t make much sense, Pangea Chat lets the user know this, and that can serve as an additional hint that their choice may be incorrect.

For the end result feedback, the app establishes a baseline “correct” translation from a reliable underlying translation model. The user is then evaluated based on how “close” they got to that correct translation by using state-of-the-art sentence embedding neural networks, to achieve a measure of “semantic similarity.”

In regards to the Interactive Grammar Checker feedback:
-Some errors are caught with manually created, rule-based patterns.
-Other errors are caught solely based on the output of large language models.

Both strategies have their pros and cons. Rule-based strategies can have much higher precision as they’re able to target very specific errors outlined by actual human beings. These can be subject to human error, and, sometimes, encapsulate errors outside of their intended pattern.

Similarly, the output of large language models can be both occasionally astounding or completely inaccurate. A wide breadth of errors can be embedded into the “understanding” of a large language model, allowing us to capture many categories of error without having to utilize manually created rules. However, these are subject to machine error, and can sometimes be misleading, suggesting feedback that is not relevant, or failing to capture an error that might be very apparent to a trained human educator.

Additionally, we utilize the powerful generative abilities of large language models to provide custom generated qualitative feedback for errors. While these, too, are subject to the faults of large language models– they also benefit from rich real time feedback on typical learner errors like never before!

Pangea Chat’s focus is on providing a low-risk, high support environment in which we help students 1) communicate in their target language from day 1, and 2) meet language learners where they are in the language learning journey to boost their confidence in using and producing the language. Pangea Chat creates an immersive learning experience that helps them have authentic conversations in their target language by providing them with AI-powered support to both compose and understand received messages.

Interactive Translation is not your typical “translation” feature – in fact, it’s something completely new! Interactive Translation is activated when a student doesn’t know how to say what they want to say in their target language. The student writes in their base language, and Interactive Translation is activated to provide students with a learning activity that allows them to translate their message into their target language while increasing proficiency, getting exposure to new words and language structures, and critically thinking about choices using what they already know about the language.

That being said, Pangea Chat is not “focused on translation.” The Interactive Translator is just one of a set of learning tools that help students 1) stay in their target language 2) get immediate and personalized feedback and support during conversations in the target language 3) get exposure to new language related to their immediate conversational needs and, 4) gain confidence in using the target language in a low-risk environment before advancing to more high stakes interactions (i.e., spontaneous oral interactions).

While Pangea Chat is an instant-messaging platform, it’s also designed for language learning, not just language practice. In language learning, before students get to informal language and slang, it is generally accepted that they need to have a good foundation in the “formal” structure of language (overall accepted grammatical structures of a language in standard, textbook, usage). Supporting this, teachers we have worked with have expressed the need and desire to have students practice the language they are learning in class (“formal”) in other contexts (such as Pangea Chat) in communicative ways, and students have told us they appreciate learning the correct way to say things, especially at the beginner level.

It is important to understand, though, that the goal of Pangea Chat is not to teach “language for texting.” The goal is to help students communicate in their target language and improve their proficiency as they interact with peers. Even so, we recognize that some teachers and learners may not want to emphasize the standard, textbook, usage of language and may want to expand into informal usage. We are working on the ability to set the level of formality that a user wants to use, practice, and learn as they message within the platform. At the moment, a user could use informal text message abbreviations in the app, but would likely not be suggested those abbreviations in the Interactive Translation or Interactive Grammar Checker interactions.

For example, a user can write “Kiero ir x una gaseosa.” and the message will be sent through without any errors being detected. If a student clicked on “x” for a contextual definition, they would see: In this context, “x” is used as an abbreviation for “por” which translates to “for” in English. So, while the system is not actively teaching text message abbreviations, they could be taught in class and then practiced on Pangea Chat.

In the same way, if a student is engaging in conversation with a conversational partner who happens to be a native Spanish speaker, for example, that uses these common informal, text abbreviations, they would also get that exposure while getting language support from Pangea Chat to understand any new abbreviations.

Worth noting is that teachers and students always have the ability to turn off the Interactive Grammar Checker if they would like to avoid any grammar corrections that may seem too “formal” for them.