Multimodal Corpus of Multi-party Conversations in Second Language

We developed a dialogue-based tutoring system for teaching English to Japanese students and plan to transfer the current software tutoring agent into an embodied robot in the hope that the robot will enrich conversation by allowing more natural interactions in small group learning situations. To enable smooth communication between an intelligent agent and the user, the agent must have realistic models on when to take turns, when to interrupt, and how to catch the partner’s attention. For developing the realistic models applicable for computer assisted language learning systems, we also need to consider the differences between the mother tongue and second language that affect communication style. We collected a multimodal corpus of multi-party conversations in English as the second language to investigate the differences in communication styles. We describe our multimodal corpus and explore features of communication style e.g. filled pauses, and non-verbal information, such as eye-gaze, which show different characteristics between the mother tongue and second language.