Social Robots for Language Learning: A Review

Berghe, Rianne van den; Verhagen, Josje; Oudgenoeg‐Paz, Ora; Ven, Sanne H. G. van der; Leseman, Paul

doi:10.3102/0034654318821286

Cited by 231 publications

(130 citation statements)

References 90 publications

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“…Social robots and related technologies are increasingly used with children in longitudinal contexts, such as education, healthcare, and therapy [6,23,40,43,49,59,60]. Because the goals of child-robot interactions in these areas-namely learning, behavior change, and improving health-necessarily take time, the interactions children have are thus longer-term, with repeated encounters over weeks or months.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Children's Perceptions and Acceptance of a Social Robot

Kory-Westlund

Breazeal

2019

Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children

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Children's interactions with social robots and other technologies are increasingly longitudinal, especially in areas such as healthcare, therapy, and education. As such, we need to understand how children perceive social robots over time and the kinds of relationships they develop. Relatively few validated assessments exist that measure young children's relationships or their perception and acceptance of social robots. Thus, we present pilot tests of two assessments created for use with children aged 4-7: the Picture Sorting Task and the Social Acceptance Questionnaire. Through a singlesession study and also a long-term study, we found that children responded appropriately to the assessments and that the assessments could capture changes in children's perception and relationship over multiple encounters.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Children's Perceptions and Acceptance of a Social Robot

Kory-Westlund

Breazeal

2019

Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children

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“…RALL is in general a very new research field, with most work being carried out during the previous decade. A number of existing surveys [3,[6][7][8][9] summarize earlier studies, as well as the general research questions and challenges. It has been known for quite some time that robots can be beneficial for language learning.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the scope of this work, and given that a comprehensive review of RALL [9] has recently been made, we concentrate on related studies where the robot acts as a peer or social companion, as they share the use of communicative language teaching and/or collaborative language learning with our study. We further focus on studies with more humanoid robots, rather than those using toy-like robots (e.g., Philips iCat and Lego Mindstorms in [8], the snowman Keepon in [18], the muppet-like Tega in [19]), since the focus is on developing practice that is suitable for adult learners and that is realistic, in its use of non-verbal social interaction signals.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robot Interaction Styles for Conversation Practice in Second Language Learning

Engwall

Lopes

Åhlund

2020

Int J of Soc Robotics

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Four different interaction styles for the social robot Furhat acting as a host in spoken conversation practice with two simultaneous language learners have been developed, based on interaction styles of human moderators of language cafés. We first investigated, through a survey and recorded sessions of three-party language café style conversations, how the interaction styles of human moderators are influenced by different factors (e.g., the participants language level and familiarity). Using this knowledge, four distinct interaction styles were developed for the robot: sequentially asking one participant questions at the time (Interviewer); the robot speaking about itself, robots and Sweden or asking quiz questions about Sweden (Narrator); attempting to make the participants talk with each other (Facilitator); and trying to establish a three-party robot-learnerlearner interaction with equal participation (Interlocutor). A user study with 32 participants, conversing in pairs with the robot, was carried out to investigate how the post-session ratings of the robot's behavior along different dimensions (e.g., the robot's conversational skills and friendliness, the value of practice) are influenced by the robot's interaction style and participant variables (e.g., level in the target language, gender, origin). The general findings were that Interviewer received the highest mean rating, but that different factors influenced the ratings substantially, indicating that the preference of individual participants needs to be anticipated in order to improve learner satisfaction with the practice. We conclude with a list of recommendations for robot-hosted conversation practice in a second language. Keywords Robot-assisted language learning • Multi-party human-robot interaction • Collaborative language learning • conversational practice 2 Collaborative Robot-Assisted Language Learning Developing a setup for a humanoid robot that can engage in a realistic social conversation with two L2 learners simultaneously is, to the authors' knowledge, unprecedented in Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL).

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“…In this context, such social robots can play roles such as that of a tutor or teacher, peer, or novice, in the learning activity [4]. Different areas of application have been explored, such as language learning [5], mathematics [18], sustainable development [1], writing skills [8], and others. Social robots are also extensively used for assisted therapy for autism spectrum disorders [34,38].…”

Section: Educational Robots and Assistive Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using tabletop robots to promote inclusive classroom experiences

Neto

Johal

Couto

et al. 2020

Proceedings of the Interaction Design and Children Conference

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Geometry and handwriting rely heavily on the visual representation of basic shapes. It can become challenging for students with visual impairments to perceive these shapes and understand complex spatial constructs. For instance, knowing how to draw is highly dependent on spatial and temporal components, which are often inaccessible to children with visual impairments. Hand-held robots, such as the Cellulo robots, open unique opportunities to teach drawing and writing through haptic feedback. In this paper, we investigate how these tangible robots could support inclusive, collaborative learning activities, particularly for children with visual impairments. We conducted a user study with 20 pupils with and without visual impairments, where they engaged in multiple drawing activities with tangible robots. We contribute novel insights on the design of children-robot interaction, learning shapes and letters, children engagement, and responses in a collaborative scenario that address the challenges of inclusive learning.

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Social Robots for Language Learning: A Review

Cited by 231 publications

References 90 publications

Assessing Children's Perceptions and Acceptance of a Social Robot

Assessing Children's Perceptions and Acceptance of a Social Robot

Robot Interaction Styles for Conversation Practice in Second Language Learning

Using tabletop robots to promote inclusive classroom experiences

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