Using GPT-4 to Tutor Java Programming in Amharic

Education is associated with economic development. Higher levels of education creates better likelihoods of employment. Technical education is growing even more important in the modern world. In Africa and other developing areas, there are many barriers to education. One such barrier is non-home language education. When students are forced to learn technical subjects in a second language, then they are doing double work. Not only are they learning a new technical subject; they are also translating all the new terms and concepts in and out of their home language. This paper specifically looks at using an artificial intelligence to help tutor the technical subject of Java Programming in the Amharic language. A Java tutoring system was developed which used GPT-4 as its artificial intelligence. The system was configured (or prompted) to act as a tutor in the Java programming language and to assist students using the Amharic language. The results of this research showed that although GPT-4 did make some language errors in Amharic, the language evaluation showed that at university level, students could easily recognize the language errors and still benefit from the Amharic Java Programming tutor.