Intelligent Tutoring Systems usually take into account only the cognitive aspects of the student: they may suggest the right actions to perform, correct mistakes, and provide explanations. However, besides cognition, educational researchers increasingly recognize the importance of factors such as self-confidence and interest that contribute to learner intrinsic motivation. We believe that the student affective goals can be taken into account by implementing a model of politeness into the tutoring system. This paper aims at providing an overall account of politeness in tutoring interactions (in particular, natural language dialogs), and describes the way in which politeness has been implemented in an intelligent tutoring system based on an animated pedagogical agent. The work is part of a larger project building a socially intelligent pedagogical agent able to monitor learner performance and provide socially sensitive coaching and feedback at appropriate times. The project builds on the experience gained in realizing several other pedagogical agents.
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