dc.description.abstract | Past studies had pointed out that English teaching in Asian countries mostly adopts a more passive and boring traditional teaching mode, with fewer opportunities for learners to actually practice oral English. Accordingly, some studies had been addressed a pedagogical term, called context-awareness, that could give a great benefit to make learners become more active. However few studies explored the influence of context-awareness and oral discourse on learning. In addition, past studies had also pointed out that drama learning is helpful for English speaking, but few studies provided learners with the opportunity to practice drama dialogue alone. Therefore, this study not only helps learners to practice English with their peers, but also further enables learners to practice English dialogue through systematic interaction with machines.
To address these issues, we develop a Context-Awareness Smart Learning Mechanism (CASLM) with five mechanisms including context-aware learning content, context-aware input assistance, oral recognition feedback, peer cooperative learning and smart conversation robot. These mechanisms were provided to help learners in their learning. To explore the impact on learning, this study divided a total of 68 eighth grade learners into three groups for a six-week experiment. The experimental group used the learning mechanism developed in this study; the control group I only used the built-in functions of the general tablet; while the control group II used traditional teaching method.
The results show that learners using CASLM were superior to the other two groups in both oral and conversational skills. This indicates that CASLM had significant effects in both oral and conversational skills. Furthermore, the number of times for completing dialogue exercises can predict the oral performance by 30%. This finding implies that learners who got higher performance in completing dialogue exercises would achieve higher oral ability. Additionally, the results also show that learners who used CASLM to practice dialogues significantly more frequently than those who used the general tablet, which means that using CASLM to assist them in practicing English dialogues in real situations can effectively improve learners′ learning motivation. Finally, from the questionnaire and interview, it is found that learners hold a positive attitude towards the use of CASLM. | en_US |