Adapting an anthropomorphized robot for enhancing EFL learning motivation and performance at an elementary school in Taiwan

Abstract

This study introduced an anthropomorphized robot-assisted instructional tool that we developed for English as a foreign language (EFL) learning and assessed the effectiveness of robot-assisted English learning. An experimental design was adopted in this study and a total of 53 Taiwanese students in the third grade of elementary school participated in the experiment, including: one class consisting of 28 students, which was labeled as the experimental group, while another class of 25 students was labeled as the control group. There were two kinds of data collection that were used in this study: two tests (listen-ing-and-acting as well as questioning-and-answering tests) and a questionnaire (learning material motivation scale). On the whole, the experimental group performed better than the control group on the listening-and-acting as well as on the questioning-and-answering tests. Additionally, the experimental group had higher learning material motivation than the control group, inclusive of attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction domains. The overall results suggest a new paradigm about our applications in teaching and learning English for Taiwanese EFL elementary school students.