Abstract
Robot-assisted language learning (RALL) is a promising application when employing social robots to help both children and adults acquire a language and is an increasingly widely studied area of child–robot interaction. By introducing prosodic entrainment, i.e., converging the robot’s pitch with that of the learner, the present study aimed to provide new insights into RALL as a facilitative method for interactive tutoring. It is hypothesized that pitch-level entrainment by a Nao robot during a word learning task in a foreign language will result in increased learning in school-aged children. The results indicate that entrainment has no significant effect on participants’ learning, contra the hypothesis. Research on the implementation of entrainment in the context of RALL is new. This study highlights constraints in currently available technologies for voice generation and methodological limitations that should be taken into account in future research.
Highlights
We examined whether language learning can be influenced by making robots use speech entrainment, another interactive social cue whereby conversation partners adapt to each other in terms of verbal and non-verbal communicative behavior [9]
We investigated whether the implementation of entrainment in a robot tutor can increase L2 learning
This paper presents a novel experimental study investigating the effect of speech entrainment in child–robot interaction in Robot-assisted language learning (RALL)
Summary
Over the past few decades, robots have come to assist humans in a variety of ways. Whereas, at first, this mostly concerned the automation of relatively simple tasks, it is possible to design socially capable robots which can be used in a variety of settings requiring social interactions such as education. Other technology-based tools (e.g., intelligent tutoring systems or ITS) are already in use in classroom settings. One of their advantages is that they can provide personalized feedback in a one-to-one interaction, a method of education that has been shown to be highly effective compared to group education [1]. When equipped with a humanoid body, social robots resemble a human teacher more closely, which has been argued to have “a strong positive effect on the students’
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