The Impact of
AI
‐Powered Robots on Speaking Skills: Exploring the Mediator Role of Foreign Language Enjoyment and Self‐Efficacy in Higher Education
Biyun Zhang ABSTRACT
Practicing speaking has remained a permanent difficulty for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students, mainly due to the limited chances to engage in meaningful speaking interaction in supportive settings. AI‐powered robots, in response, emerged as a successful speaking interaction in language teaching. Grounded in self‐determination theory (SDT), this study examined the effects of AI‐powered robots on EFL learners' speaking performance, with enjoyment and self‐efficacy as mediating variables. We used a pretest–posttest design and conducted the intervention over 10 weeks. The sample included 224 learners from a Chinese university, where 123 participants were assigned to the experimental group and 101 to the control group. While the former participated in robot‐based speaking tasks, the latter got involved in traditional teaching, such as textbook‐based communication activities, description, drill practice and pairwise work. The results showed that while both groups confirmed significant improvements in speaking scores over time, the experimental group had significantly higher achievement compared to the control group. These findings indicated that AI‐powered robots can create a structured, interactive and supportive learning atmosphere that more effectively improves learners' speaking ability. As for the indirect effects, running a parallel mediation analysis revealed that both self‐efficacy and enjoyment mediated the effect of the treatment, jointly accounting for 28.6% of the total intervention effect. Uniquely, enjoyment accounted for 15.5% of the total effect, and self‐efficacy for 13.3% of it. These results indicated that self‐efficacy and enjoyment serve as partial mediators in improving speaking performance through AI‐powered robots. Accordingly, these results underscore the pedagogical potential of robot‐assisted language learning in EFL instruction and highlight that integrating the robots significantly improved the learners' self‐efficacy, boosted their enjoyment and enhanced their speaking performance.