A Cognition-Based Game Platform and its Authoring Environment for Learning Chinese Characters

Abstract

We present integrated services for playing and building games for learning Chinese characters. This work is unique on two aspects: (1) students play games that are designed based on psycholinguistic principles and (2) teachers compile the games with software tools that are supported by sublexical information in Chinese. Players of the games experience and learn the grapheme-morpheme relationships underlying the writings and pronunciations of Chinese characters. Both visual and audio stimuli are employed to enhance the learning effects in the games. The software tools, utilizing structural knowledge about Chinese characters, offer instrumental information to facilitate the compilation of games. Preliminary studies with 116 participating students, in an elementary school in Taipei, showed that students who were given a one-month period to play the games improved their response time in naming tasks for reading Chinese characters. In addition, evaluation of the authoring tools by 20 native speakers of Chinese indicated that using the tools significantly improved the efficiency of preparing the games and the quality of the resulting games.