چکیده:
it sought to verify the postulation that agent-based instruction could
offer a compromise approach to teaching L2 idioms where form and
meaning would be equally emphasized during instruction. Given that
anthropomorphism has not been much under scrutiny, this research,
on the other hand, sought to ascertain whether learning and retention
of English idioms would be differentially impacted when two different
modalities of virtual tutors —anthropomorphic and nonanthropomorphic—
were present in the tutorial. To this aim, the
participants of the study received instruction on 128 English idioms
from human teachers, a multimedia application featuring a humanoid
virtual teacher, or a piece of multimedia courseware with a nonanthropomorphic
virtual tutor. Analysis of the post-intervention
measures of L2 idiom knowledge revealed that agent-based instruction
had proved more effective in improving both learning and retention of
the target idioms among the participants. A further finding was that
despite the greater motivational benefits of the humanoid virtual tutor,
it had not privileged the participants, performance-wise.
خلاصه ماشینی:
AutoTutor, Baldi, COSMO, Herman the Bug, and STEVE (Graesser, Person, & Harter, 2001; Massaro & Cohen, 1994) are but a few examples of pedagogical agents shown to have served learners by arousing their curiosity, garnering and directing their attention to the learning task being introduced, and generally, by generating strong motivation in them through performing a blend of roles such as "supplanting", "scaffolding", "demonstrating", "modelling", "coaching", and "testing" at the time of instruction (Clarebout, Elen, Johnson, & Shaw, 2002, pp.
Given that studies (Allen, Crossley, Snow, & McNamara, 2014; Corbeil, 2007; Duffy & Azevedo, 2015; Ergül & Koç, 2013; Johnson, Rickel, & Lester, 2000; Noma & Badler, 1997) have shown that virtual tutors offer the potential to serve as powerful attention-getting devices that garner and focus the learners’ attention on salient aspects of the learning task, it can be hypothesized that agent-based instruction may represent a compromise approach to language pedagogy such that while meaning is emphasized through the provision of contextual cues, definitions, and examples of use in the tutorial, equal importance is accorded to form by the virtual tutors increasing the saliency of L2 structures at the time of instruction.
On the other hand, given that little is known about whether anthropomorphism can be an issue in agent-based instruction, the overriding objective of the present study is to compare tutorial situations featuring two distinct modalities of pedagogical agents in an attempt to ascertain whether the learning outcome can be differentially impacted when an anthropomorphic and a non-anthropomorphic virtual tutor embark on teaching English idioms to different constellations of language learners.