A child with a robot Nao. Source: University of Bielefeld.
Researches of the University of Bielefeld (Germany) plan to use the humanoid robot Nao to teach immigrant children from 4 to 6 years old foreign languages.
The project L2TOR (Second Language Tutoring Social Robots), financed by the European Union, will run for three years. Researchers are developing modules that recognise a child’s language motivation and abilities so that the robot can react individually to each children.
Computer scientists, educators and linguists are working together on this project in a consortium of five universities and two companies. The University of Plymouth (United Kingdom) is coordinating the research.
While teaching, Nao pays attention to what children say, along with facial expressions and gestures, and helps them when they do not understand. The content of the course covers vocabulary and simple grammatical structures.
Researchers will test how Now is able to help children learn to form sentences. To do this, difficult types of words such as prepositions (i.e. spatial expressions like ‘in,’ ‘on,’ or ‘next to’) are also taught. “Children could ultimately be prompted to tell the robot a short story based on pictures displayed on a tablet,” explains professor Stefan Kopp, from the research group Cognitive Systems, in the press release of the university.
“The individualized language support provided by the robot complements the existing resources available in day care centers. It lets us give immigrant children the chance to acquire their new language in a playful way. This also goes for German children first experiencing a foreign language, such as English.”
The project L2TOR (Second Language Tutoring Social Robots), financed by the European Union, will run for three years. Researchers are developing modules that recognise a child’s language motivation and abilities so that the robot can react individually to each children.
Computer scientists, educators and linguists are working together on this project in a consortium of five universities and two companies. The University of Plymouth (United Kingdom) is coordinating the research.
While teaching, Nao pays attention to what children say, along with facial expressions and gestures, and helps them when they do not understand. The content of the course covers vocabulary and simple grammatical structures.
Researchers will test how Now is able to help children learn to form sentences. To do this, difficult types of words such as prepositions (i.e. spatial expressions like ‘in,’ ‘on,’ or ‘next to’) are also taught. “Children could ultimately be prompted to tell the robot a short story based on pictures displayed on a tablet,” explains professor Stefan Kopp, from the research group Cognitive Systems, in the press release of the university.
“The individualized language support provided by the robot complements the existing resources available in day care centers. It lets us give immigrant children the chance to acquire their new language in a playful way. This also goes for German children first experiencing a foreign language, such as English.”
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