A Survey of Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL) <s> LANGUAGE LEARNING RESULTS <s> Teaching is inherently a social interaction between teacher and student. Despite this knowledge, many educational tools, such as vocabulary training programs, still model the interaction in a tutoring scenario as unidirectional knowledge transfer rather than a social dialog. Therefore, ongoing research aims to develop virtual agents as more appropriate media in education. Virtual agents can induce the perception of a life-like social interaction partner that communicates through natural modalities such as speech, gestures and emotional expressions. This effect can be additionally enhanced with a physical robotic embodiment. This paper presents the development of social supportive behaviors for a robotic tutor to be used in a language learning application. The effect of these behaviors on the learning performance of students was evaluated. The results support that employing social supportive behavior increases learning efficiency of students. <s> BIB001 </s> A Survey of Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL) <s> LANGUAGE LEARNING RESULTS <s> There is an on-going study which aims to assist in teaching Sign Language (SL) to hearing impaired children by means of non-verbal communication and imitation based interaction games between a humanoid robot and the child. In this study, the robot will be able to express a word in SL among a set of chosen words using hand movements, body and face gestures. Having comprehended the word, the child will give relevant feedback to the robot. In the current study, we propose an interactive story telling game between a NAO H25 humanoid robot and preschool children based on Turkish Sign Language (TSL). Since most of the children do not know how to read and write, and they are not familiar with sign language, we prepared a short story including specially selected words which is performed by the robot verbally and with sign language as well. The children are expected to give feedback to the robot with matching colour flashcards when it implements a word in sign language. The robotic event covered 106 preschool children. The aim is to evaluate the children's sign language learning ability from a robot, and comparison of these results with the results of video based studies. <s> BIB002 </s> A Survey of Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL) <s> LANGUAGE LEARNING RESULTS <s> The work presented in this paper was carried out within an on-going project which aims to assist in Sign language tutoring to children with communication problems by means of interaction games with a humanoid robot. In this project, the robot is able to express words in the Turkish Sign language (TSL) and American Sign Language (ASL), and having comprehended the word, the child is motivated to give relevant feedback to the robot with colored flashcards, signs and sound. Within the multi-modal turn-taking games, child both learns the semantic and the realization of the words, besides have chance to test this information through imitation based interaction games. The performance of the children is also verified with flash card based activities as a part of the game, as a feedback for the teacher/parent. Child's performance is recognized and evaluated by the robot through an RGB-D camera based system. This paper summarizes a longitudinal exploratory study from a classroom work, where children were taught 6 gestures including signs from ASL and TSL with the assistance of a Nao H25 humanoid robot. The performances of the children and robot are presented and discussed in terms of children's subjective and objective evaluations. <s> BIB003 </s> A Survey of Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL) <s> LANGUAGE LEARNING RESULTS <s> This paper presents a humanoid robot assisted imitation based interactive game for Sign Language (SL) tutoring. The game is specially designed for children with communication impairments. The work presented is a part of Robot Sign Language Tutor∗ project. In this study, a Robovie R3 humanoid robot is used to express a set of chosen words in SL using hand movements, body and face gestures. The robot platform is specially modified with LEDs in face (for non-manual facial gestures), additional DoFs in wrist and 5 independent fingers at hands for robust SL generation. The robot is able to communicate with the participant by recognizing signs and colored flashcards through a RGB-D camera based system and generating a selected subset of signs, including motivating facial gestures, in return. The game also aims to improve children's imitation and turn-taking skills and to teach the words semantically. Current paper presents results from the preliminary study with a group of hearing impaired children, where children had almost 100% score in recognizing the robot's signs from a subset of 12 words. <s> BIB004 </s> A Survey of Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL) <s> LANGUAGE LEARNING RESULTS <s> This paper presents a socially interactive humanoid robot-assisted system for sign language (SL) tutoring for children with communication impairments by means of imitation-based interaction games. In this study, a five-fingered robot platform Robovie R3 is used to express a set of chosen words in Turkish sign language (TSL) using hand and body movements combined with facial expressions. The robot is able to recognize signs through a RGB-D camera and give vocal, visual and motional (as signs) feedback. The proposed game consists of an introductory phase where participants are introduced to the robot and the signs; an imitation-based learning phase where participants are motivated to imitate the signs demonstrated by the robot, and a test phase where the signs taught in the previous phases are tested within a guessing game. The current paper presents results from the studies with three different test groups. The presented humanoid robot is used as an assistive social companion in the game context using sign language and visual clues to interact with the children. The robot is evaluated according to the participant’s sign recognition ability within different setups. The results indicate that the robot has a significant effect on the sign learning performance of participants. <s> BIB005
According to Chen et al., language can be broken down into a four-level hierarchy, "from subword (e.g., phonemes, morphemes), word (e.g., semantics, morphology), clause (e.g., syntax/grammar), and up to discourse/text (e.g., conversation)" [23:547] . Robots have been used to influence learning at all levels. Results vary per area and are summarized below. As robot-assisted language learning is still a new field, more research is required in most areas before definitive conclusions can be drawn. Additionally, differences in form, voice, social role (Section 2), and instructional method (Section 5.4) may account for some of the variability in results. Previous work suggests there are no gender differences in how well males and females learn from robots BIB003 BIB004  BIB002 BIB001 BIB005 . See Table 2 in the Appendix for a summary of results.