MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF LAW GRADUATION THESIS B. DEGREE IN ENGLISH Major: Legal English INVESTIGATING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN LEARNING LEGAL ENGLISH OF ENGLISH MAJORED STUDENTS AT HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF LAW Supervisor: Luong Minh Hieu Student: Dao Phu Quang Student ID: 1952202010053 Class: LE44B Ho Chi Minh City, 21st June, 2023 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MING UNIVERSITY OF LAW FACULTY OF LEGAL LANGUAGES INVESTIGATING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN LEARNING LEGAL ENGLISH OF ENGLISH MAJORED STUDENTS AT HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF LAW Submitted by: Dao Phu Quang Supervised by: Luong Minh Hieu Ho Chi Minh City, 21st June, 2023 Table of Contents LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. REVIEW OF LITERATURE .43 1 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AI Artificial Intelligence AGI Artificial General Intelligence ANI Artificial Narrow Intelligence ASI Artificial Super Intelligence AWE Automated Writing Evaluation ESP English for Specific Purposes HSK Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi ICT Information and Communications Technology IELTS International English Language Testing System iSTART Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking ITS Intelligent Tutoring System NLP Natural Language Processing TELL Technology-Enhanced Language Learning TOEFL Test of English as a Foreign Language TOEIC Test of English for International Communication 2 ABSTRACT AI has been considered a surging phenomenon for the world as it revolutionises a vast range of fields, helping people get their jobs done faster, more effectively. For Language Learning specifically, AI’s techniques such as machine learning, deep learning, Natural Language Processing, etc., greatly take part in making AI applications for English Language learning.
Legal English Learning is not an exception as it can also benefit from AI applications. This survey is conducted to investigate the current presence of AI technology in the Legal English Department of Ho Chi Minh City University of law. Moreover, this study sheds light on the students’ perception, attitude of AI technology towards learning Legal English, the students’ implementation of AI into their studies and. Results showed that the majority of the students being surveyed use AI applications to serve their study purposes, and claimed that AI proved useful in their study and willing to implement it for the future Legal English studies.
This implies that Legal English majors showed positive perceptions and attitudes and acceptance towards AI applications. However, the presence of AI Legal-English-based applications remained limited or unknown to the students. Therefore, this paper can be used as the base for future study approaches focusing on more specific AI applications for the Legal English Department. Moreover, further observations and investigations should be conducted about the specific tendencies or challenges of students when learning Legal English so as to strengthen the means and usage of AI.
Statement of the problem Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become one of the most influential inventions of the human kind. Thanks to the implementation of machine learning, it can mimic human’s intelligence to a certain level. In some cases, it can out-perform human’s ability to do tasks (Scharre et al. With appropriate exploitations, AI is a great tool to help humans solve workloads faster.
AI has been implemented in a multitude of fields. AI is capable of reading scans and increasing the precision in health diagnosis. AI can also be taken into advantage in Agriculture by checking, analysing data to assist in improving crop yields. AI plays an important role in helping reduce energy consumption in highly energy-demanded factories, farms and businesses (Franke, 2019).
In E-commerce, customer’s tendency, interest and patterns can be analysed and studied by AI. After a few purchases, it can use the information to further recommend customers about the categories of products that they are also interested in, or predict the upcoming products that customers might be buying. The application of AI can be seen in spam- filtering systems used by Gmail to sort out spam emails and directly send them to the spam folder. According to Kumaran (2022), this technology has been proven to reach the filtration accuracy of an estimated 99.
Social platforms such as Instagram and Facebook implemented the mechanics similar to Gmail’s spam filtering. AI is Instagram’s fundamental basis for the content reviewing process. Through machine learning, AI is able to detect and automatically remove contents that go against the community guidelines even before anyone could see and report it. In some cases, the addition of AI can support machines and programs to do complex tasks.
For instance, Artificial Intelligence is being implemented in Facial recognition systems - a technology capable of matching a human face to a database of faces to serve the purpose of authentication. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence’s deep learning 4 mechanics, it can learn to detect human faces regardless of the changes occurring such as the presence of bruises, acnes or facial hair such as a moustache or beard grown by the individuals (Lehr & Crumpler, 2021). Language Education is also an aspect that AI can shine. Technology- enhanced language learning (TELL) researchers have been applying a multitude of technology relating to language education for decades (Zou et al.
In a previous study, Heil (2016) has pointed out that de-contextualization and authentic speech production insufficiency are the problems many applications that serve to support language learning are currently facing. However, Chen et al. (2019) have created a context-aware ubiquitous program - a system that integrates wireless, mobile and highly context-awareness technology to quickly grasp the current situation the learner is in in the real world and devise solutions, support in accordance (Hwang et al. ,2009) but for language learning.
There, AI is being implemented as an enhanced tool, providing contextualisation for the learners depending on the scenarios they are facing. As a result, students are more inspired to learn languages and achieve great performances. Additionally, with the recent introduction of AI-fuelled chat-bots such as ChatGPT - an Artificial intelligence chat-bot being trained to follow enquiries and provide detailed responses. One of its most impressive aspects is the capability to provide the most appropriate, accurate and up-to-date responses and even to the most complex and controversial topics in an instance.
Furthermore, it can write poems, generate codes, design presentations or perform other academic tasks such as write a contract, a cover letter, design CVs, and fact check. Thus, AI technology can be considered as a big potential to exploit in language studying (Huang et al. Despite its popularity in the Western societies. AI technologies in general remain a relatively new topic for the world.
According to the Oxford Insights’s Government AI readiness Index 2021 report, 44 out of 160 countries in the world were reported to have their own AI strategic plans and show willingness to join the global AI race. Vietnam is also quite 5 new with the technology, spending less than a dollar per capita on AI. For a brief comparison, in the same period, Singapore, a country in the Southeast Asia region spent roughly 68 dollars per capita for AI (Vincenzo Caporale, 2021). Being ranked 62th place in the government AI readiness Index in 2021, and as a developing country, Vietnam’s AI research capacity stands at 26th in the world.
It is estimated that by 2030, AI will account for 13 trillion USD to Vietnam’s economy, equivalent to 1.2% of the nation’s GDP. Currently in Vietnam, AI is being applied in smart urban areas, in healthcare insurance, smart agriculture and environmental technology (Samaya Dharmar, 2023). However, there is currently very little to no mentions about how Artificial Intelligence can be used in Vietnamese Education. There are attempts to bring AI to the classroom, but at the moment of this thesis, the vast majority of schools typically follow the traditional methods of learning and teaching students.
Moreover, students are not officially introduced to AI technology, as well as teachers are not yet capable of implementing AI to their curriculum or lesson plan. There is uncertainty on the reasons, but the first one could be the lack of equipment or programs to encourage, support or instruct teachers to bring Artificial Intelligence into their teaching work. The second reason could be the lack of exposure to the technology themselves. Vietnam had been using applications of AI in a few fields, still AI applications are fairly limited and has not been exploited especially in Education as whole and in Language Education in particular.
Despite the advantages, there are only a few ways for them to approach AI in Vietnam. One of the prominent leading inventions – ChatGPT is currently not available in certain countries including Vietnam. The only few ways for the teenagers and young adults to use a product or an application that is AI-based is Google assistant of Google and Siri of Apple. Both are virtual assistants for Android and IOS devices respectively.
While it is possible to bring AI to the class or utilise AI to study or improve language skills, especially with writing skill, there are controversial opinions, stating that AI dependence 6 could lead to detrimental effects, especially with the learner’s language ability. Therefore, this thesis is conducted to focus on the topic of AI in Language Studying aspects of the Legal English Department. Rationale of the study Previous studies have conducted research about the tendency of applying AI technologies in Language Education such as Pikhart (2020). There are few studies specifically focusing on the analysing trends and impact of AI technology on Language learning such as Huang et al.
Some studies focused on analysing the perceptions and attitudes of students towards using AI applications on improving English skills such as Suryana et al. However, there are currently no studies conducted about AI’s implementations, its impact on students in Legal English Learning. For students in the Legal English Department of Ho Chi Minh City University of Law, the majority of the subjects are language-focus. Advanced Grammar and Language Skills are subjects relating to English usage in general.
Advanced writing for instance, in order to pass, students are required to perform precise and coherent writing capability by doing academic writing tasks similar to IELTS writing task 1 and 2. There are 4 main subjects namely, Legal Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking being studied throughout the span of 3 semesters which is heavily legal language-based. Generally, the learners are trained to use English but in a legal context. Legal terminology, Legal consulting and contract review, Legal translation and interpretation and Legal Drafting are also related to Law but remain focused on language aspects.
These subjects can be assisted by AI programs. However, little to no usage for AI is being implemented. Students are still required to use English in these subjects to manually draft documents, translate and interpret Legal tasks. In addition, despite the existence of many studies about AI usage for Language teaching purposes.
However, studies about how AI can be used to help learning Legal English is not being thoroughly examined. Aim of the study This paper was carried out with a view to investigate the current usage of AI technologies such as software, and systems in the Legal English Department. This study is dedicated to observing the attitude and perception of English-major students towards Artificial Intelligence. The study then specifically focuses on analysing the impact of AI in Legal English Department, specifically the positives and the negatives influence and give conclusions on whether AI should be implemented into Legal teaching and learning.
In order to achieve the aim of this study, the research was designed to seek the answers to the following questions: ● How common is AI for students of the Legal English Department? ● What are the perceptions and attitudes that students have about AI? ● What are the benefits and challenges in the application of Artificial Intelligence in legal English learning? 4. Description of Subjects For students, specifically students who are studying in Universities, they are the potential users of this invention. Olson et al.