Loading...

A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Foreign Language

Haeri, Nafiseh Sadat | 2017

839 Viewed
  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: English
  3. Document No: 50044 (31)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Languages and Linguistics Center
  6. Advisor(s): Alemi, Minoo; Meghdari, Ali
  7. Abstract:
  8. Although Robot Assisted Language Learning (RALL) has recently received attention as a tool for language learning, its role in pragmatic development has gone unnoticed. Hence, this study sought to explore the effect of RALL on pragmatic learning of greeting, thanking, and request speech acts by young Persian-speaking EFL learners. To this end, 38 preschool female and male kids (3-6 years old) were assigned to the RALL (19 students) and game-based (19 students) groups. The humanoid robot for the RALL group was used as an assistant to the teacher while for the game-based group the instruction was based on gaming methods such as command, mystery bag and pass the ball games. The instructional sessions for both groups took eight sessions in which the RALL group took 8 hours while the non-RALL group took 32 hours to cover the same materials. After the instructions, the post-test of both groups were analyzed using independent sample t-test and the results revealed that there was a significant difference between RALL and game-based group’s posttest results for the three speech acts. It can be argued that RALL instruction was more effective than game-based instruction in improving students’ performance in posttests. Besides, this study revealed that the combination of robotic technology with pragmatic study was advantageous for students’ learning achievements. This study has implications for the use of robots in language classrooms
  9. Keywords:
  10. Speech Acts ; Pragmatics ; Humanoid Robot ; Robotic Assisted Language Learning (RALL) ; Request Speech Acts ; Iranian EFL Learners

 Digital Object List