Second Language Tutoring using Social Robots
L2TOR (pronounced ‘el tutor’) is a research project funded by the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Commission, which ran from 2016-2019. The project aims to design a child-friendly tutor robot that can be used to support teaching preschool children a second language (L2) by interacting with children in their social and referential world. For more details, consult the project’s website.
Selected publications:
- de Wit, J., Vogt, P., & Krahmer, E. (2023). The design and observed effects of robot-performed manual gestures: A systematic review. ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction, 12(1), 1-62. PDF
- de Haas, M., Vogt, P., van den Berghe, R., Leseman, P., Oudgenoeg-Paz, O., Willemsen, B., … & Krahmer, E. (2022). Engagement in longitudinal child-robot language learning interactions: Disentangling robot and task engagement. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction, 33, 100501. HTML
- de Wit, J., Willemsen, B., de Haas, M., van den Berghe, R., Leseman, P., Oudgenoeg-Paz, O., Verhagen, J., Vogt, P. & Krahmer, E. (2021). Designing and Evaluating Iconic Gestures for Child-Robot Second Language Learning. Interacting with Computers, 33(6), 596-626. PDF
- van den Berghe, R., de Haas, M., Oudgenoeg‐Paz, O., Krahmer, E., Verhagen, J., Vogt, P., … & Leseman, P. (2021). A toy or a friend? Children’s anthropomorphic beliefs about robots and how these relate to second‐language word learning. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 37(2), 396-410. PDF
- de Haas, M., Vogt, P., & Krahmer, E. (2020). The effects of feedback on children’s engagement and learning outcomes in robot-assisted second language learning. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 7: 101. HTML
- de Wit, J., Krahmer, E. & Vogt, P. (2020) Introducing the NEMO-Lowlands iconic gesture dataset, collected through a gameful human–robot interaction. Behavior Research Methods, 53: 1353-1370. HTML
- van Minkelen, P., Gruson, C., van Hees, P., Willems, M., de Wit, J., Aarts, R., Denissen, J., & Vogt, P. (2020). Using self-determination theory in social robots to increase motivation in L2 word learning. ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction. PDF
- de Wit, J., Brandse, A., Krahmer, E., & Vogt, P. (2020). Varied Human-Like Gestures for Social Robots: Investigating the Effects on Children’s Engagement and Language Learning. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (pp. 359-367) PDF
- Vogt, P., van den Berghe, R., M. de Haas, L. Hoffmann, J. Kanero, E. Mamus, et al. (2019). Second Language Tutoring using Social Robots. A Large-Scale Study. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2019) (Best paper award.) PDF
- De Wit, J., Schodde, T., Willemsen, B., Bergmann, K., de Haas, M., Kopp, S., Krahmer, E.J., & Vogt, P. (2018). The Effect of a Robot’s Gestures and Adaptive Tutoring on Children’s Acquisition of Second Language Vocabularies. In Proceedings of the 13th Annual ACM International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI’18) Link.
- Tony Belpaeme, Paul Vogt, Rianne van den Berghe, Kirsten Bergmann, Tilbe Göksun, Mirjam de Haas, et al. (2018) Guidelines for Designing Social Robots as Second Language Tutors. International Journal of Social Robotics. PDF
- Paul Vogt, Mirjam de Haas, Chiara de Jong, Peta Baxter and Emiel Krahmer (2017) Child-Robot Interactions for Second Language Tutoring to Preschool Children. Frontiers Human Neuroscience 11,73. DOI
Core Tilburg team:

- Paul Vogt (PI)
- Emiel Krahmer (PI)
- Mirjam de Haas (PhD student)
- Jan de Wit (PhD student)
- Bram Willemsen (researcher)
Collaborators:
- Tony Belpaeme (UGent)
- Stefan Kopp (Univ of Bielefeld)
- Aylin Küntay (Univ of Koç)
- Paul Leseman (Univ of Utrecht)
- Rian Aarts (Tilburg University)
Past students:
- Pieter Wolfert
- Chani Savelberg
- Reinjet Oostdijk
- Nicole Goossens
- Elise van Wonderen
- Chiara de Jong
- Emmy Rintjema
- Peta Baxter
- Anne Kessels
- Marijn Peters Rit
- Sanne van Gulik