Search arXiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2601.01234

Bridging Language Gaps: Utilizing Interactive Robots to Teach Cantonese in Real-Life Contexts for Newly-Arrived Children

Ka-Yan Fung·Yuxing Tao·Tze-Leung·Rick Lui·Kuen-Fung Sin
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Hong Kong's education system is notably multicultural, including local, non-Chinese-speaking, and newly arrived students (NAS) (Mandarine Chinese-speaking). NAS can guess the meaning of vocabulary but cannot speak out, presenting unique challenges for them, particularly language barriers and cultural differences. These challenges hinder their academic success and social integration, leading to feelings of isolation and demotivation. Current resources often fail to address the emotional well-being of these students and predominantly focus on English language acquisition, leaving a gap in support for learning Cantonese and navigating the local cultural landscape. This study explores the effectiveness of an interactive robot, Boon Boon, in teaching Cantonese through real-life contexts to enhance NAS children learning engagement and motivation. The research questions are: (1) How does interactive robot-empowered scenario learning influence the learning engagement and motivation of NAS in learning Cantonese? and (2) What is the impact of a robot-empowered scenario learning system on the Cantonese language proficiency of NAS? Fourteen children are invited to participate in a four-day learning program with Boon Boon. The preliminary result indicated that Boon Boon drove students' attention to learning and academic achievement. Future research will focus on long-term assessments of robot-empowered learning's effectiveness and explore the scalability of this approach across diverse educational settings and cultural backgrounds.

Explore related subjects

cs.ETcs.HCcs.RO

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Ka-Yan Fung, Yuxing Tao, Tze-Leung, Rick Lui, Kuen-Fung Sin. 2026-01-03. Bridging Language Gaps: Utilizing Interactive Robots to Teach Cantonese in Real-Life Contexts for Newly-Arrived Children. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.01234

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

ASTRA: Toward Agentic AI for Intelligent Device-Network-Cloud Synergy in Next-Generation Mobile Communication

The evolution toward next-generation mobile communication systems demands intelligence-native networks capable of autonomously adapting to user intent, yet the prevailing 3GPP protocol-driven device-network-cloud (DNC) architecture imposes three structural bottlenecks: protocol-constrained decision spaces confining optimization to predefined parameter subsets, cascaded information asymmetry from lossy interface compression that strips semantic context and causes intent miscalibration, and inherently reactive coordination mechanisms that trigger actions only after performance degradation. This paper proposes an autonomous agentic AI paradigm named Agentic Synergy for Telecommunication Resource Autonomy (ASTRA), which introduces a three-tier agent layer, including device agent, network agent, and cloud agent, decoupling network intelligence from the underlying hardware infrastructure. These agents collaborate through bidirectional semantic channels, including semantic intent messages, capability abstraction messages, global directives, and peer coordination, executing a six-phase cycle of perceive, reason and predict, communicate, decide, act, and learn that transforms reactive protocol-driven operations into proactive, intent-calibrated optimization over the full decision space. Validated through system-level simulations in two representative scenarios, ASTRA achieves a 13.1\% average throughput gain in dense-crowd cell selection by redistributing UEs from congested cells via semantic load exchange, and an 18.2\% passive handover reduction in high-speed mobility through predictive trajectory-aware coordination, providing initial evidence that the proposed agentic framework accesses solution regions structurally inaccessible under protocol-constrained architectures.

cs.ET↗
arXiv2026

A Closed-Form Molecule-Release Rule for Diffusion-Based Molecular Communications with Ligand Receptors

The number of molecules released per bit is a fundamental design variable of diffusion-based molecular communication (MC), and ligand-receptor reception breaks the more-is-better intuition. Too few molecules leave the bound-receptor observations buried in binding noise, while too many amplify the accumulated intersymbol interference and saturate the finite receptor population, again making the observations indistinguishable. Reliability therefore peaks in an interior operating region whose location seems to require an exhaustive search over the channel dynamics. In this paper, we show that this search can be obviated for a biologically plausible receiver that compares consecutive bound-receptor counts without channel state information or a decision threshold. We derive a closed-form transmission rule, which sets the number of molecules released per bit such that the receptor dissociation constant equals the geometric mean of the two bit-conditioned received concentration levels, prove that it exactly minimizes the bit error probability of a memoryless binomial receptor model, and express it in the physical channel parameters through an Euler--Maclaurin evaluation of the interference. Time-domain Monte Carlo sweeps of the channel and receptor parameters, corroborated by particle-based simulations, show that the empirically optimal release count coincides with the prediction or lies above it by a small factor.

cs.ET↗
arXiv2026

Composability rather than computation sets the cost of an analog EML hardware fabric

The operator eml(x, y) = exp(x) - ln(y) with the constant 1 generates the elementary functions, a continuous counterpart to NAND. Whether it yields a useful fabric had not been asked of hardware. We ask in network models, circuit simulation and SkyWater 130 nm layout. Four bipolar junctions evaluate the operator for 13 fJ, beating a width-matched digital datapath by 4-134x. The fabric assembled from them is not cheap: it loses to resource-matched baselines, and over the reals its grammar excludes trigonometry. Amplifiers holding those junctions' operating points take 74.5% of a cell's current, so a cell costs 3000 times what they spend. Extracted non-idealities cost 2.6x when a cell must hold a value and nothing when it need only be repeatable. Sharing them across cells recovers two of the three orders. The premise was that a universal primitive licenses a uniform machine. It survives in the primitive and fails in the machine.

cs.ET↗