An Educational Game Helping Learners to Distinguish Similar Chinese Characters while Minimizing Human Efforts in Game Content Creation

2012 ◽  
pp. 164-180
Author(s):  
Zhi-Hui Hu ◽  
Billy H.W. Chiu ◽  
Howard Leung ◽  
Yun Xu
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Educational Games ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
Educational Game ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Computer Assisted Language Learning ◽  
Chinese Characters ◽  
Item Generation ◽  
Content Creation

One of the difficulties in learning Chinese Characters is distinguishing similar characters. Usually similar characters have quite different meanings. This can cause misunderstanding and miscommunication in daily life. It is thus important for students learning the Chinese language to be able to distinguish similar characters and understand their proper usage. In this chapter, the authors propose some educational games to train students to distinguish similar characters. As Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) software, the proposed educational games can reduce the workload of teachers for delivering language lessons. By applying Computer Assisted Item Generation (CAIG) technique, a large amount of assessment items can be generated efficiently. The authors propose a method to identify similar Chinese characters such that the game content creation can be made automatic thus minimizing the human efforts. Learners need to understand the concepts rather than memorize the answers in order to perform well in the games. This results in a high replay value for the proposed educational games.

Automatic Online Educational Game Content Creation by Identifying Similar Chinese Characters with Radical Extraction and Graph Matching Algorithms

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 31-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kwong-Hung Lai ◽  
Howard Leung ◽  
Zhi-Hui Hu ◽  
Jeff K.T. Tang ◽  
Yun Xu
Keyword(s):  
Graph Matching ◽  
Educational Games ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
Spatial Relationship ◽  
Educational Game ◽  
Chinese Characters ◽  
Matching Method ◽  
Matching Algorithm ◽  
Content Creation ◽  
Attributed Relational Graph

One of the difficulties in learning Chinese characters is distinguishing similar characters. This can cause misunderstanding and miscommunication in daily life. Thus, it is important for students learning the Chinese language to be able to distinguish similar characters and understand their proper usage. In this paper, the authors propose a game style framework to train students to distinguish similar characters. A major component in this framework is the search for similar Chinese characters in the system. From the authors’ prior work, they find the similar characters by the radical information and stroke correspondence determination. This paper improves the stroke correspondence determination by using the attributed relational graph (ARG) matching algorithm that considers both the stroke and spatial relationship during matching. The experimental results show that the new proposed method is more accurate in finding similar Chinese characters. Additionally, the authors have implemented online educational games to train students to distinguish similar Chinese characters and made use of the improved matching method for creating the game content automatically.

scholarly journals Online Interactive Activities to Learn Ramayana Epic by Primary Tamil Students

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 201
Author(s):  
Kanthimathi Letchumanan ◽  
Paramasivam Muthusamy ◽  
Potchelvi Govindasamy ◽  
Atieh Farashaiyan
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Digital Natives ◽  
Net Generation ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Computer Assisted Language Learning ◽  
Questionnaire Data ◽  
Digital Or

<p>The Ramayana epic has many moral values that can be used as guidance in our daily life especially for the development of a person towards a better direction. Besides this, there are many other lessons that can be learned from within each Ramayana epic stories, for example, the values and norms, customs, mannerism lessons and the various characteristics of people and so on. But today’s digital or Net Generation teenagers do not find reading Ramayana as fun or interesting because of its text form. The technology is more advanced and Ramayana epics look very ancient in the eyes of this Digital Natives. This study used the idea of gamification, a game play mechanics to create meaningful learning experiences and make the learning more interesting and fun. Gamification also looks at games and learning from a different angle on how to make learning more meaningful, engaging, interactive, fun and interesting. In view of this, this research aims to seek if the use of online interactive activities could encourage and motivate teenagers to read Ramayana epics. Forty Primary Tamil students participated in this study voluntarily. The data were collected through a questionnaire. Based on the pre-questionnaire data regarding respondents’ prior knowledge on Ramayana, it was found that respondents had minimal knowledge about it. 37% said they would like to read the epic through comic books and 63% claimed that they would prefer computer. This study has some implications for computer assisted language learning. </p>

Computer assisted language learning for two-byte languages: the case of Chinese

ReCALL ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magnus Nordenhake ◽  
Roger Greatrex
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
The United States ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Computer Assisted Language Learning ◽  
Teaching Materials ◽  
Language Courses

The teaching of the Chinese language in Sweden, and indeed the whole of Scandinavia, has always suffered from an absence of suitable teaching materials. Hitherto, there has not existed any teaching course specifically adapted to the needs of Swedish students, with the result that teachers have been forced to use English-language courses produced in the United States or England, or text-books printed in Mainland China or Taiwan

Using Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) materials in English as Second Language (ESL) classrooms: perspectives of teachers and students in United Arab Emirates

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramia DIRAR SHEHADEH MUSMAR
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
United Arab Emirates ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
English Language ◽  
Learning Technologies ◽  
Student Diversity ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Computer Assisted Language Learning ◽  
Learning And Teaching

Integrating scaffolding-learning technologies has been recognized for its potential to create intellectual and engaging classroom interactions. In the United Arab Emirates, having language teachers employ computers as a medium of new pedagogical instrument for teaching second languages generated the idea of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) as a medium of an innovative pedagogical instrument for facilitating and scaffolding language learning, with an aspiration that it will lead to improved English language attainment and better assessment results. This study aims at investigating the perspectives of students and teachers on the advantageous and disadvantageous impacts of CALL on learning and teaching English as a second language in one public school in the emirate of Abu Dhabi. The results show that CALL has a facilitating role in L2 classroom and that using CALL activities is advantageous in reducing English learning tension, boosting motivation, catering for student diversity, promoting self-directed language learning and scaffolding while learning English. The results additionally report that numerous aspects like time constraints, teachers’ unsatisfactory computer skills, insufficient computer facilities, and inflexible school courses undesirably affect the implementation of CALL in English classrooms. It is recommended that further studies should be undertaken to investigate the actual effect of CALL on students’ language proficiency. 

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