From deadpan machine to relating socially: Middle school students’ experiences speaking English with embodied conversational agents

Speaking with an artificial counterpart in simulated environments has been shown beneficial for foreign language learning. Still, few studies have explored how it is experienced by younger students. We report on a study of Swedish students (N = 22) speaking English with embodied conversational agents (ECAs) in everyday-life scenarios. Data were collected on students’ rankings, choices, and open-response items in logbooks and questionnaires. Self-reported data on experiences were analyzed through three dimensions: cognitive, emotional, and social. Findings show that students were generally satisfied with the activity and emotionally engaged with large individual differences within the social dimension. We unpack aspects regarding social relating to the ECA, analyzing the space between experiencing the ECA as a socially distant “deadpan machine” to humanizing and relating socially.