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1.0 OUR LANGUAGE STORY

2.0 THE LANGUAGE HERO

This is a Series game. 1.0 Our Language Story is a physical card game using storytelling game mechanics to help players become more familiar with foreign languages. 2.0 The Language Hero is a digital game that players could become more familiar with foreign culture by playing it. We want players could be familiar with the language first, and then get more contact with the whole culture.

Our Language Story

Overview

  • Name: Our Language Story

  • Target Audience: Middle Schooler (11-14 year old)

  • Type: Card game

  • Time: Around 20 minutes

  • Goal: Expose middle schoolers to different languages by letting them create stories in different languages as well as different settings. 

Game Rules

  • Number of players: Four 

  • Type of cards: 

  • 63 language cards in four different languages ( French, German, Hindu, Mandarin) and in four colors

  • Each language card is consist of four parts: points, words in target language, pronunciation, English translation

  • 9 scene cards ( Ship, Car, Home, Museum, City, School, Zoo, Castle, Restaurant, Amusement Park)

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  • Randomly assign eight language cards to each player in one round. 

  • The first player takes out any card of his own and starts a story with the words on the card. The players should pronounce the words in the target language in their stories.

  • The player should draw a scene card before making the story in each round, and the story should happen in that particular scene. 

  • The next player takes out another card of his own. This card and the previous card need to be the same color or have the same points.

  • The player who has the most points at the end wins. The next player should follow the story of the last player. He needs to use both the words on the previous card and the words on his own card. Four players are making a whole story together each round.

  • If the player doesn’t have a card in the same color or have the same points, or he cannot continue to make the story, he will be out. The last player left will win this round and get one point.

Learning Objectives

  • Designed to be an educational game

  • Stimulate interest in language learning

  • Generate familiarity with basic vocabularies in other languages 

  • Develop literacy and storytelling ability

  • Cultivate creativity and imagination

  • Practice code-switching 

How can students learn through playing the game

Engaging

      Vocabulary game was more fun than traditional activities (Riahipour  &                Saba, 2012) and could increase engagement (Wells, & Narkon, 2011) 

Use vocabularies in context

      Processing a word together with contextual information might create                    semantic associations  and enhance retention (Schouten-van Parreren, 1989)

Learn how to pronounce words during interaction

Use foreign language words in a non-threatening situation

Play Test

4 playtester, college students, played the game 4 times

  • ​They liked the concept of the game, teaching students multiple languages

  • They liked the rules and story-based aspect of the game, thought the mechanics could be really interesting

  • Liked the cards and thought they were well designed

  • They thought the scene cards were good and added context to the game 

  • They thought the story-based gameplay need some extra touches, felt like it didn’t flow as smooth as they would have liked it to

  • Wanted more direction in how the stories were told and more losing conditions as the game was hard to lose at.

The Language Hero

Overview

  • Name: The Language Hero 2.0

  • Target Audience: Middle schoolers, but could be played by everyone

  • Type: Digital game on computers

  • Goal: Expose players to different cultures by letting them select various representative cultural elements

Game Mechanics

  • There will be different levels from simple to difficult in the game.

  • At most levels, there will be national flags and multiple representative cultural elements of those countries. 

  • The game starts with one type of culture (American), and in the following levels, more types of culture (Chinese, French, etc.)  are gradually added one at a time. 

  • In order to pass the level, the player needs to correctly select all the elements of the specified culture. If the wrong element is selected, the player will fail and restart the same level.

  • There will be sub-sessions teaching one aspect of the culture (food, festivals, etc.). The player needs to pick up elements in a specific order.

Learning Objectives

  • Expose players to different cultures and help them understand the basic elements and characteristics of different cultures

  • Stimulate the interest in learning about different cultures and cultural diversity

  • Raise awareness of cultural differences and variation, cultivate the ability to distinguish different cultures

  • Introduce specific aspects of different cultures, which will help players have a deeper understanding of the culture (e.g. subcategories- Festival)

  • Outcome - after playing this game, players will be able to know the basic characteristics of a different culture, be able to distinguish different culture, and get some insights into some specific aspect of different cultures

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Vision for What's Next

  • Choosing avatars

  • More items

  • More cultures

  • More tricks: mazes and culture-related enemies 

Rationales of Learning

Narratives 

  • Many studies have revealed the benefits of narrative-based learning (e.g., Mcquiggan et al., 2008; Rowe et al., 2011). 

  • Although our game is not a narrative game, most instructions are narrative.

 

Learning from errors

  • According to connectionism (Thorndike, 2000), human beings, even animals, can learn from errors. 

  • In our game, the error is that the avatar eats the wrong items.

  • The system tells players that they eat the wrong items when they do.

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Zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) 

  • We organize the levels in accordance with the zone of proximal development 

 

Identity

  • Players can choose their favorite characters from each culture as the avatar.  

  • Players care more about the game when they can personalize the avatars (Schell, 2014).

  • This personalization may help to shape players’ identity, increase engagement, and trigger their interests in the chosen characters and culture. 

Play Test

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  • They did know which item belongs to which culture, although this could just be because of their general knowledge of the cultures

  • It would be better to allow players to pause the game and read the instructions when playing the level of Dragon Boat Festival. 

  • Maybe we can firstly let players watch a video about items, like the Dragon Boat Festival, then let players practice by playing

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