PandeSAL2: An empathic embodied conversational agent for learning English as a second language

• Main Authors: De Los Reyes, Jane Ericka A., Garcia, Jann G., Santiago, Raphael Christian C., Talento, Michael Eric P.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2013
• Subjects: English language > Study and teaching > Foreign speakers; Second language acquisition; English as a second language; Computer Sciences
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/10610
• Institution: De La Salle University

There are existing technologies and theories that try to help us understanding and integrate our knowledge of student affect into learning models, ultimately redressing the cognitive-versus-affective imbalance in computerized teaching systems. Studies have also shown how Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) help sustain engagement between the user and the virtual agent. Our goal is to design and develop an ECA to teach English as a secondary language to Filipino preschool children. This paper describes our approach towards this goal: using a webcam, a Kinect sensor and a microphone to capture the students facial expressions, upper-body gestures and voice during learning build a model using the corpus and, create an avatar that can aid in learning English while exhibiting emotions.