Socially Interactive Robots Can Teach Young Students Language Skills; a Systematic Review

The goal of this systematic review is to consider whether social factors of robots allow the robots to be socially interactive language learning assistants for young students in the classroom. A total of 443 articles were found. After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, 17 empirical studies in which a robot assisted children in preschool through elementary school on their language skills were analyzed. This review discusses to which areas of language learning robots have been applied and how the social interaction of the robot influences student learning behaviors and outcomes. The results of this paper indicate that robots have capabilities that are useful for instructing students in oral language skills because of their socially interactive nature. There is room for this social dynamic to be researched further in the human factors and human robot interaction fields.