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The Internet is rapidly changing the way knowledge is created, acquired, and used, as well as opening up new and promising avenues for education (United Nations Educationnel, Scientific and Cultural Organization & Tsinghua University, 2022). During Coronavirus Disease 2019, to ensure “school is suspended without suspension,” many schools started online teaching. Therefore, the dual impact of technological progress and public health events increased users’ demand for quality online learning platforms that can bring them authentic and personalized learning experiences.
As Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China stated (2010), “Information technology had a revolutionary impact on the development of education and must be prioritized.”
With the rapid development of information technology, the Internet now stimulates profound changes in the field of education. Information and communication technology (ICT) held enormous promise for educational reform. For example, a well-designed platform could support students' differentiated learning with technology while also promoting students' overall development.
As stated in the Ten-Year Development Plan for Information of Education in China (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, 2010), “We should provide learners with an information-based environment and service for personalized learning.” The development of adaptive online learning platforms has been proposed in our country's education informatization development plan. Additionally, there has been a discernible integration of personalized training initiatives into national and regional policy documents, aiming to foster increased flexibility and personalized learning across all levels of education.
Meanwhile, as part of the new curriculum reform process, as the English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education (2022 edition) (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, 2022) stated, it was proposed to promote the deep integration of information technology and English teaching. In light of this, greater emphasis was placed on the reform of teaching and learning practices in the realm of educational informatization.
Furthermore, there is a potential to leverage modern information technology as a valuable support system for English teaching in accordance with the stipulations of the curriculum standards. Specifically, the curriculum mandates that junior high school students should spend a minimum of 30 minutes per week to engage in extracurricular audiovisual activities. In light of this, modern information technology can play a vital role in facilitating and enhancing such activities, contributing to the overall efficacy of English language instruction.
As a result of the swift evolution of the Internet, online learning has grown in popularity, and learning is no longer limited to the traditional classroom and a set period of time. Consequently, a growing number of researchers started to integrate big data and artificial intelligence technologies into the field of education.
The primary aim was to cater to a broader spectrum of learners with personalized and high-quality learning resources and tools. The integration of information technologies in education has been going on for more than two decades, with learning management systems (LMSs) emerging as one of the most popular applications. Numerous Chinese scholars have attempted to apply LMSs to junior high schools’s spoken English teaching in recent years. For example, Zhang and He investigated the application of the Liulishuo app in junior high school English teaching, while Li designed the English interest Dubbing app to encourage junior high school students' enthusiasm for spoken English teaching, etc. These applications facilitated online teaching and learning (Shen, 2018).
Table 1 shows the advantages and disadvantages of some spoken English learning software in China: