Anxiety Reduction and RALL Implementation in English Grammar Acquisition among EFL Learners

The study is a part of a larger study on the impact of Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL) on English grammar acquisition and retention of adolescent English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. More specifically, the primary aim of the paper at hand was to examine the impact of RALL on adolescent EFL learners’ anxiety levels. In this regard, three intact classes (N=45) in a private language institute in Tehran were evenly divided into two experimental groups of RALL and Game-based Language Learning (GBLL) and one control group. The participants were adolescent male EFL learners between 11 to 15 years old with a mean age of 13. While the teacher, the textbook, and the teaching materials were identical in all groups, a kid-sized humanoid social robot was exclusively used in the RALL group. The data were collected through questionnaires in the final session for each group, and the results of descriptive statistics and ANOVA indicated that lower anxiety rates were observed in the RALL group. Our findings could clearly be proof of the efficiency of socially assistive robots in the instruction of language skills in a more favorable teaching context.