Chinese Children's Chinese-English Bilingual Acquisition Mode: A Comparative Experiment of AI Educational Robot and Scan Reading Pen

Abstract

Due to the lack of an English learning environment, Chinese children generally have a weak command of English. Therefore, 164 fifth-grade primary school children in Hangzhou, China, were chosen to participate in a five-month bilingual acquisition comparative experiment. During the experiment, 83 students employed AI teaching robots, whereas 81 students used scan reading pens. The acquisition method chosen was role-play reading, and the acquisition materials used were multimedia bilingual electronic picture books. The experimental results reveal that the average daily bilingual reading time of students in the two groups increased five to ten times respectively, and their final English and Chinese test scores increased by 7-8% and 3-4% on average, their oral English test scores increased by 81% and 48%. Additionally, their bilingual pronunciation and intonation improved by 2-3 grades, indicating that the AI educational robot mode can be used to improve bilingual learning outcomes, particularly their level of spoken language. This experiment shows that the AI-assisted bilingual acquisition is a practical, affordable, and widely applicable bilingual educational mode for children.