Review of theoretical approaches in oral teaching of english based on conversational agents

Abstract

The development of oral proficiency in English continues to face various difficulties associated with both traditional pedagogical practices and psychological, linguistic, and contextual factors that influence students' communicative performance. Given this reality, conversational agents have emerged as technological resources with the potential to support oral production; however, their incorporation into educational settings often lacks a clearly structured theoretical foundation. The objective of this study was to analyze the theoretical approaches related to teaching oral English proficiency through the use of conversational agents. The research adopted a qualitative, descriptive-analytical approach, based on a narrative literature review of scientific literature from academic databases such as Scopus, Google Scholar, and SciELO. The collected information was organized into analysis matrices that facilitated the identification of similarities, differences, and conceptual gaps among the reviewed approaches. The results show that the communicative, sociocultural, task-based, input-output, and technology-mediated self-directed learning approaches all converge in highlighting meaningful interaction, pedagogical mediation, and the student's active role as fundamental elements for strengthening oral proficiency. Furthermore, it is evident that conversational agents demonstrate theoretical coherence with these approaches by promoting oral practice, immediate feedback, and self-directed learning. However, a conceptual dispersion persists, hindering their systematic pedagogical integration. This underscores the need to move toward integrative theoretical frameworks that guide their use in English language teaching.