The most important function of a language is to get the message across. With robot-assisted language learning (RALL), a teacher-led situation has a complementary element when the learner can interact independently with the robot. Starting a new sentence is always a threshold you must dare to cross - it involves the student's willingness to communicate (MacIntyre 2007) and the student's public speaking language anxiety (Yaikhong, K. & Usaha, S., 2012).
Previous studies have shown that feminine and human-like features in a robot contribute to experiencing the robot as warm and competent. However, it is not yet known how the robot's attributes correlate with the desire to interact with the robot (Carpinella et al., 2017). Moreover, the RoSAS scale has been tested with images and videos, but has not yet been validated using robots in real-life situations. In this study, the robot is presented as a gender-neutral character. It has also been suggested that negative attitudes toward robots and anxiety in L2 learning may prevent participants from learning in robotic tutor mode (Kaneiro et al., 2022).
This study is a long-term study: the research design is a continuation of a study on the relationship between a child and a robot (Peura, L. & Johansson M., 2022 sub.), in which students interviewed the robot. In this research setup, the robot interviews the student. The study aims to find out how the interaction between a child and a social robot (CHI) affects the willingness to communicate in French (L2) when the robot is proactive.
RQ1: How does the robot affect the stress associated with speech production?
RQ2: How do the features of the robot correlate with the desire to interact with the robot?
The target group of the study is 10–11-year-old students (4th graders who studied with a robot and 5th graders who studied without a robot as a comparison group), for whom French is the first foreign language (L2). The research material consists of videotaped conversations with the robot and related surveys (RoSaS, PSCAS). RALL and multimodal interaction analysis serve as a methodological approach to research questions.
Bibliography:
Carpinella, C. M., Wyman, A. B., Perez, M. A., & Stroessner, S. J. (2017). The robotic social attributes scale (RoSAS) development and validation. Proceedings of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 254–262.
Kanero, J., Oranç, C., Koşkulu, S., Kumkale, G. T., Göksun, T., & Küntay, A. C. (2022). Are tutor robots for everyone? the influence of attitudes, anxiety, and personality on robot-led language learning. International Journal of Social Robotics, 14(2), 297-312.
MacIntyre, P. D. (2007). Willingness to communicate in the second language: Understanding the decision to speak as a volitional process. The modern language journal, 91(4), 564-576.
Peura, L., Johansson M., A Friend or a Machine? A Study on the child-robot relationship in a foreign language class of young learners. Sub.
Yaikhong, K., & Usaha, S. (2012). A Measure of EFL Public Speaking Class Anxiety: Scale Development and Preliminary Validation and Reliability. English Language Teaching, 5(12), 23-35.
