A Survey of Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL) <s> Interest <s> Robots increasingly have the potential to interact with people in daily life. It is believed that, based on this ability, they will play an essential role in human society in the not-so-distant future. This article examined the proposition that robots could form relationships with children and that children might learn from robots as they learn from other children. In this article, this idea is studied in an 18-day field trial held at a Japanese elementary school. Two English-speaking "Robovie" robots interacted with first- and sixth-grade pupils at the perimeter of their respective classrooms. Using wireless identification tags and sensors, these robots identified and interacted with children who came near them. The robots gestured and spoke English with the children, using a vocabulary of about 300 sentences for speaking and 50 words for recognition. The children were given a brief picture-word matching English test at the start of the trial, after 1 week and after 2 weeks. Interactions were counted using the tags, and video and audio were recorded. In the majority of cases, a child's friends were present during the interactions. Interaction with the robot was frequent in the 1st week, and then it fell off sharply by the 2nd week. Nonetheless, some children continued to interact with the robot. Interaction time during the 2nd week predicted improvements in English skill at the posttest, controlling for pretest scores. Further analyses indicate that the robots may have been more successful in establishing common ground and influence when the children already had some initial proficiency or interest in English. These results suggest that interactive robots should be designed to have something in common with their users, providing a social as well as technical challenge. <s> BIB001 </s> A Survey of Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL) <s> Interest <s> Advancement in robotic research enables robot can assist human in many way. However, few researches have been done on applying on education. This paper reports field trials of using robot in an English learning classroom. In our experiment, the robot plays as a partner of a teacher. Five models of collaboration between teachers and robot are proposed. Teachers design the course flow in advance based on the learning content and these five models. Formative evaluations of the experiments are presented to show the impact of adopting robot in the classroom. <s> BIB002 </s> A Survey of Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL) <s> Interest <s> Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), based on already well-researched Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), has been under vigorous scrutiny since recent developments in robot technology. Robots may be more successful in establishing common ground in project-based education or foreign language learning for children than in traditional media. Backed by its strong IT environment and advances in robot technology, Korea has developed the world's first available e-Learning home robot. This has demonstrated the potential for robots to be used as a new educational media - robot-learning, referred to as 'r-Learning'. Robot technology is expected to become more interactive and user-friendly than computers. Also, robots can exhibit various forms of communication such as gestures, motions and facial expressions. This study compared the effects of non-computer based (NCB) media (using a book with audiotape) and Web-Based Instruction (WBI), with the effects of Home Robot-Assisted Learning (HRL) for children. The robot gestured and spoke in English, and children could touch its monitor if it did not recognize their voice command. Compared to other learning programs, the HRL was superior in promoting and improving children's concentration, interest, and academic achievement. In addition, the children felt that a home robot was friendlier than other types of instructional media. The HRL group had longer concentration spans than the other groups, and the p-value demonstrated a significant difference in concentration among the groups. In regard to the children's interest in learning, the HRL group showed the highest level of interest, the NCB group and the WBI group came next in order. Also, academic achievement was the highest in the HRL group, followed by the WBI group and the NCB group respectively. However, a significant difference was also found in the children's academic achievement among the groups. These results suggest that home robots are more effective as regards children's learning concentration, learning interest and academic achievement than other types of instructional media (such as: books with audiotape and WBI) for English as a foreign language. <s> BIB003 </s> A Survey of Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL) <s> Interest <s> The current paper presents a case study conducted to evaluate the robot rabbit Nabaztag functioning as a vocabulary trainer for beginners of English. Hedonic aspects and motivating function, as well as the general usability and overall impression evoked by rabbit, were tested. A group of 18 5th grade students of an English class at a German junior high school were instructed to practice 20 pairs of vocabulary. Ten students were assisted by the speaking robot rabbit, while eight learned by applying an ordinary paper-and-pencil method. Results show that after one week, students who had learned with the Nabaztag had, on average, a higher recall than the control group. Moreover, the evaluation of the hedonic and pragmatic quality of interacting with the rabbit was high, as was the evaluation of both ease of use and perceived usefulness. Students learning with the rabbit were in a better mood afterwards than those who learned by means of the traditional method. <s> BIB004 </s> A Survey of Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL) <s> Interest <s> This paper introduced a telepresence robot system for English tutoring. The system consists of the user system, the server system and the robot system. The robot is controlled by the collision prevention system, direct interface, server interface with assistant teacher and remote interface with native teacher. A remote native teacher had given lessons in English using this system for a month and several issues of telepresence robot system for remote lecture are found from the lecture. <s> BIB005 </s> A Survey of Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL) <s> Interest <s> This study introduces the educational assistant robots that we developed for foreign language learning and explores the effectiveness of robot-assisted language learning (RALL) which is in its early stages. To achieve this purpose, a course was designed in which students have meaningful interactions with intelligent robots in an immersive environment. A total of 24 elementary students, ranging in age from ten to twelve, were enrolled in English lessons. A pre-test/post-test design was used to investigate the cognitive effects of the RALL approach on the students??? oral skills. No significant difference in the listening skill was found, but the speaking skills improved with a large effect size at the significance level of 0.01. Descriptive statistics and the pre-test/post-test design were used to investigate the affective effects of RALL approach. The result showed that RALL promoted and improved students??? satisfaction, interest, confidence, and motivation at the significance level of 0.01. <s> BIB006 </s> A Survey of Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL) <s> Interest <s> This paper presents a design for a cutting-edge English program in which elementary school learners of English as a foreign language in Taiwan had lively interactions with a teaching assistant robot. Three dimensions involved in the design included (1) a pleasant and interactive classroom environment as the learning context, (2) a teaching assistant robot designed and built by the researchers as instructional technology (instructional tool/medium), and (3) the need for improved motivation and learning outcomes and positive learning experiences of the students as the core research problem. This Human–Robot Interaction (HRI) led to better pedagogical effects on learning and teaching by (1) employing a vivid, enjoyable teaching approach; (2) adopting practical, interesting learning materials; and (3) creating a natural, enjoyable learning context. Both quantitative and qualitative findings of this study indicate that the students' English learning experiences were enhanced, as were their motivation and learn... <s> BIB007 </s> A Survey of Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL) <s> Interest <s> Teaching with robots is a developing field, wherein one major challenge is creating lesson plans to be taught by a robot. We introduce a novel strategy for generating lesson material, in which we draw upon an existing corpus of electronic lesson material and develop a mapping from the original material to the robot lesson, thereby greatly reducing the time and effort required to create robot lessons. We present a system, KubiLingo, in which we implement content mapping for language lessons. With permission, we use Duolingo as the source of our content. In a study with 24 users, we demonstrate that user performance improves by a statistically similar amount with a robot lesson as with Duolingo lesson. We find that KubiLingo is more distracting and less likeable than Duolingo, indicating the need for improvements to the robot’s design. <s> BIB008
Related to motivation is the concept of interest. Interest, as defined here, is how much learners want to use the technology, as opposed to how much they want to learn the target language. Interest likely drives motivation in part. Many studies have demonstrated that learners are very interested in robotic tutors BIB004 BIB003 BIB005 BIB006 BIB007 . Even though this is probably true in comparison to other technologies BIB003 , poor robotic design or implementation can negate any benefit BIB008 . As well, both You, Shen, Chang, Liu, and Chen and Kanda et al. found that interest in the robot fades over time, at around the two-week mark BIB001 BIB002 . This makes long-term studies of RALL particularly important. Strategies for prolonging interest should therefore be explored.