Four different interaction styles for the social robot Furhat acting as a host in spoken conversation practice with two simultaneous language learners have been developed, based on interaction styles of human moderators of language cafés. We first investigated, through a survey and recorded sessions of three-party language café style conversations, how the interaction styles of human moderators are influenced by different factors (e.g., the participants language level and familiarity). Using this knowledge, four distinct interaction styles were developed for the robot: sequentially asking one participant questions at the time (Interviewer); the robot speaking about itself, robots and Sweden or asking quiz questions about Sweden (Narrator); attempting to make the participants talk with each other (Facilitator); and trying to establish a three-party robot-learnerlearner interaction with equal participation (Interlocutor). A user study with 32 participants, conversing in pairs with the robot, was carried out to investigate how the post-session ratings of the robot's behavior along different dimensions (e.g., the robot's conversational skills and friendliness, the value of practice) are influenced by the robot's interaction style and participant variables (e.g., level in the target language, gender, origin). The general findings were that Interviewer received the highest mean rating, but that different factors influenced the ratings substantially, indicating that the preference of individual participants needs to be anticipated in order to improve learner satisfaction with the practice. We conclude with a list of recommendations for robot-hosted conversation practice in a second language. Keywords Robot-assisted language learning • Multi-party human-robot interaction • Collaborative language learning • conversational practice 2 Collaborative Robot-Assisted Language Learning Developing a setup for a humanoid robot that can engage in a realistic social conversation with two L2 learners simultaneously is, to the authors' knowledge, unprecedented in Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL).
In Swedish schools, newly arrived refugee and immigrant students are provided with a language introductory programme, designed for integration into the mainstream school system. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork on classroom conversations in one such introductory programme, this study analyses how Swedish as second language (SSL) students are positioned and position themselves in everyday discursive practices. The participants strive to qualify for mainstream programmes through performing a 'regular' student identity. Although educational aim and the students' investments coincide, in doing the inclusive school, the institution calls for the students to perform ethnicity. The student identities thus emerge in and through a cluster of performative effects of how they are addressed by the school as 'ethnic' students, and how they manage those very positionings. Paradoxically, an institutional construction of an inclusive school draws on a discourse of Otherness in which the student's voices are invited but seem to be ignored.
Jypp, Dompa and Jackson Pollock: Narratives on place, urban vernaculars, and upper class at a prestigious upper secondary school. Labelling a linguistic style by appointing it to certain groups of speakers and where they live can be a deeply problematic enterprise as both identities, language use and space become fixed and limited. In Sweden the speech style called Rinkeby Swedish (RS) has become an icon of ethnic Otherness, educational failure, and of an aggressive sexist and homophobic masculinity – ascribed to a fixed locality in the outskirts of the big cities. In this paper we have turned our gaze towards a place that have typically not been associated with RS before: a Stockholm elite school. The analysis reveals how a group of students, illustrated by how the participant Wille, perform authenticity and indexically anchor their linguistic practices and epistemics in various linguistic contexts. In a case study, we explore how the participants talk about and use not one but many different linguistic styles. We argue that the participants employ these styles as resources to comment on locality as well as social hierarchies in the school and the society at large.
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