A Survey of Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL) <s> Length <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> Length <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> BIB002
Study length tends to be short, with about half of all studies taking place in one session. Even longer studies (e.g., 1-2 months), tend to be composed of a limited number of visits (e.g., 4-8 sessions). A notable exception is Lee et al., which was 16 sessions BIB002 . Long-term studies are critical as a novelty effect has been found in human-robot interaction. Individuals are originally excited about the introduction of robots, which in turn affects their behavior (often increasing interaction time and, conceivably, reported desirability and likeability), but this novelty effect begins to wear off after more constant exposure. Though there is not an exact time where this novelty effect begins to fade, it has previously occurred during the second week of daily exposure BIB001 . As very few studies have been conducted for longer than 4 sessions, it is hard to say whether learning effects might be amplified over the long-term, motivation effects may be muted, or the reverse. If the hope is to start using this technology more consistently in real-world settings in the near future, as it should be, then more long-term, numerous sessions studies need to be conducted.