Effect of Embodiment and Improving Japanese Students’ English Pronunciation and Prosody with Humanoid Robot

Abstract

The overall goal of this research project is a study using RALL (Robot Assisted Language Learning) for Japanese students to improve pronunciation and prosody skills, and to provide more evidence of the effect of embodiment on RALL in English pronunciation and prosody. The subjects are divided into two groups: ten participants who use a robot (RALL) and ten participants who use a screen-based e-learning via computer (non-RALL). The robot had been used for the experiment was NAO from Aldebaran. The experiment took around 3 weeks for one participant to complete all the lessons including three pronunciation lessons and two prosody lessons. In order to assess the experiment, independent t-tests were performed regarding comparison of RALL and non-RALL scores difference. Dependent t-tests were performed to assess the performance of each group. The results shows that there was no significant effect of embodiment between RALL and non-RALL group. However, RALL system could improve Japanese students` English pronunciation, prosody, and overall pronunciation and prosody aspect better than non-RALL system.