Abstract
This paper presents the use of educational games in the context of the “Arabiyyatii” research project, a three-year project funded through Qatar National Research Fund. The scope of the project is teaching Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) to kindergarten students (5-6 years old) that are native speakers of the Qatari dialect. Part of the new curriculum envisioned in the project includes the use of simple educational games, specifically designed and developed for tabletop surface computers. The paper presents a naturalistic study design, following the activities of 18 students for a period of 9 weeks in the project. The paper presents three of the most played games by the students, along with analysis on collected data, focusing on students’ performance and attitudes towards the new curriculum. Results analysis provided an encouraging image, suggesting that the conducted activity was able to increase students’ engagement in language learning, increase their exposure to MSA, and develop their vocabulary.
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Acknowledgements
This work has been funded by a grant from QNRF (Qatar National Research Fund), NPRP Project 4-1074-5-164 titled “Advancing Arabic Language Learning in Qatar”.
The authors would like to thank Christos-Panagiotis Papazoglou and Sachin Mousli for their contribution in the development of the games presented here. They also thank Jamila Al-Shammari, the class teacher; Hanan Mohamed for developing further the games, including new ones for future studies; Zahra Moufid for helping in gathering the content (images and words) used, and Sara Shaaban for the designing the images related to the Aladdin folklore story.
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Papadopoulos, P.M., Ibrahim, Z., Karatsolis, A. (2016). Learning Arabic Through Play Games on Tabletop Surface Computers in Early Childhood. In: Zvacek, S., Restivo, M., Uhomoibhi, J., Helfert, M. (eds) Computer Supported Education. CSEDU 2015. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 583. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29585-5_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29585-5_12
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