A Kickstarter campaign is trying to make it easier for children to learn a second language by rewarding them with fun when they learn (and understand) new words and phrases.
EYMS is a robot developed by FLASH Robotics that can understand facial expressions and movements, helping your child learn through tags, which shows true understanding of what the robot is teaching them.
These tags have pictures on that represent a certain word or phrase. EYMS encourages children to learn by associating this tag with a word in their mother tongue and then teaches them the word or phrase in the second language. By telling the child to repeat the word, they begin to understand the meaning of the words and the relationship between them.
FLASH Robotics spent time researching into how people learn languages with the Wrocław University of Science in Technology, in Wrocław and then went on to start developing the robot in 2008. Only now has it got to a point where it can benefit children.
This method of teaching a language is supported by extensive research at Yale University, which has revealed having a physical teacher, even if it’s a robot, rather than a smartphone app is a much better way of learning for children.
“Kids have short attention spans, and anything that doesn’t engage all their senses, or feel truly “real” to them, will offer disappointing results in terms of your child retaining what he or she has been told or shown,” the company behind EYMS said.
“We created EMYS to eliminate this challenge, driven by a vision to give parents a way to dramatically empower their kids when it comes to language learning.”
The next stage of EYMS’s development is turning everyday objects into smart tags using chip-embedded stickers that can be identified by EYMS’s reader. This means children can choose what they want to learn and how they want to associate the words with their own possessions.
You can find out more about the campaign on Kickstarter.
