The robot Pepper visited the school in Erfde and reviewed English vocabulary with the children in Year 5, practiced forming sentences with specific vocabulary and speaking freely in English. The pupils interacted with the robot for around 10 minutes in groups of 3-5 children and used their existing English skills.
Of course, this was unfamiliar for everyone - and some were quite reserved at first - but in the end, 21 out of 23 children found the experience a good one and can imagine practising their language skills with such a robotic assistant in the future. At least one pupil would even prefer the robot to a human teacher.
The findings from this first test of previously quite simple applications to supplement lessons motivate us to continue. In particular, free speech (at a given language level) and the formation of sentences with given vocabulary worked very well. In the background, Pepper's connection to ChatGPT provided the necessary language skills. The language model was not only able to implement the specific tasks well, it also independently introduced suitable new vocabulary and taught it to the children.