Language Learning Games vs. Glorified Flashcards

Anyone who is familiar with my research is probably aware of the fact that I tend to be very critical of what I call "glorified flashcards" (GFs). I use this term to refer to language learning digital "games" that are basically fill-in-the-blank or multiple choice questions slapped into a basic electronic gaming environment. Often these take the form of Jeopardy-type games.

However, I thought that I should point out that though I am critical of using GFs as language learning serious "games", I do believe that they can be very useful! In fact, I use them quite frequently. I just don't think that they should be considered as serious language learning "games". Instead, they are glorified flashcards. They are tools that allow language learners to quickly practice specific language elements within a prepared electronic environment. But they are not really "games".

When I use GFs I tend to create them myself because I am very particular about the content and format that I like to have them use. For example, in a GF* that I created you can review any of the vocabulary from any of the chapters from any of the textbooks used for beginning and intermediate Spanish language courses at the University of Texas at Austin. In this case, I designed the GF to be as useful as possible for students in these courses because they can choose which chapter vocabulary lists they would like to practice. Moreover I created this game as a multiplayer game which makes it particularly useful (I've found) as an in-class review activity because you can pit groups of students against each other. And believe me, they can really get into it!

My most recent GF* is designed using the same framework (a multiplayer game that generates random questions based on content specified by the user.) In this new GF what I've done though is focused on verb conjugations instead of vocabulary identification. Players can choose which verb conjugations they would like to practice, and how large they would like the game to be, and the questions are randomly generated accordingly. Instead of basing the verbs used on any given textbook though, I have instead based them on Mark Davies' Frequency Dictionary of Spanish. That is, I took all the verbs (there are 1083) that appeared within the top 5000 most frequent words in Spanish. I also pulled their conjugations directly from the Royal Academy's website instead of creating a script to generate them automatically (I did this because a lot of them were irregular).

In my opinion (which is obviously biased, so feel free to share your own opinion below), I think that these GFs are on par with, or better than, most language learning "games" already out there. But they're still not really games. They're just competitive flashcards online. I do plan to continue developing more real language learning games, but these will be much more like the game* that I created for my dissertation. I hope that we can see many more such games be created, and I hope that they can be used effectively alongside the much more common GFs.

*Not currently available.

Family Feud for Language Learning

There's nothing like a little healthy competition to get adult language learners involved in class! Well, maybe chocolate, but for now we'll stick with competition. And what makes competition even better? When the students themselves have influence on the material!

I discovered this several years ago while teaching Spanish at The Pennsylvania State University. I had always created review games for my students on a regular basis, but until then I had always based the content of the games on what I thought the students should study, or on what would be covered in the exam. Makes sense, right? Well, at PSU I decided to take a new approach, I used the reports generated for me by the students' online homework to identify areas where students were committing the most errors, and I based the content of the Jeopardy-style review games on those areas. The students responded very positively to this new approach.

So, what has this got to do with Family Feud? Well, in Family Feud the content of the game comes from a survey. This is actually why I have normally avoided creating Family Feud-style games, because creating them requires involvement from more than just myself. And, as anyone who has tried to get volunteer assistance knows, it's hard to come by.

This semester I wanted to give it another go, so I had my students themselves complete the survey. This way I could more or less assure that the spirit of volunteerism would prevail. Moreover, I was able to make participation in both the survey and the game itself pedagogically relevant. Here's how I did it with the content from our textbook chapter that covers the arts (vocabulary) and hypotheses (grammar):

Preparation:

1.      Generate list of questions for students to answer. The questions should use the target vocabulary but should not use the hypothesis structure. An example can be found here. You should give the students a few days to complete the form.

2.      Collect the students’ answers and determine which answers are the four most common for each question. For ties, google the results and order them according to the number of hits.

3.      Generate a question using the hypothesis structure for each item (I personally made sure to never repeat any verbs). Fill out the FamilyFeud PowerPoint template with these questions and the ordered answers.

4.      Print out an answer sheet using the option to print nine slides per page.

Execution:

1.      Divide the class into groups of around four students. All students should put their textbooks away.

2.      Open the PowerPoint but leave it in “Normal” mode (do NOT enter “Presentation” mode.)

3.      Randomly pick a group to go first.

4.      Read the question.

5.      The group can discuss and then one student must answer using the hypothesis structure. (The student who answers for each group should rotate throughout the course of the game.)

6.      Limit the time each group has to answer to one minute.

7.      If the student answers with one of the answers (check the answer sheet) delete the appropriate rectangle and give that group the number of points indicated on the rectangle.

8.      The next group then gets a chance to answer the same question.

9.      Continue until all groups have had a chance to attempt to answer the question or until there are no answers left to reveal.

10.  The group that answered second is now asked the next question. This way you rotate which group gets to go first with each question.

11.  When you run out of time and/or questions the game is over and the group with the highest score wins.

Results:

1.      I used this activity in the spring of 2014 with my SPN 610 class. My students responded very positively to this activity! They were very excited and engaged, and were especially excited to see whether their personal answers had won a rank in the game. I also noticed:

a.       Students were often eagerly asking each other what different vocabulary words meant.

b.      At the beginning of the game many students were having difficulty with the hypothesis structure, but by the end they were using much better and with little/no help.

c.   Unlike what often happens with my activities, there were no students who were not actively engaged in this game.

2.      During the spring of 2014 I also shared this activity with my colleagues who were also teaching SPN 610. One of them sent me an email letting me know that "My class loved the game!", and another referred to me as “Family Feud” with a big smile on his face when passing me in the hall. I take this as evidence that this activity worked with more than just my class.

Preparing for College/University Foreign Language Exams

I know that there is already a lot of advice floating around the web about how to prepare for exams, and I'd like to add my two cents. Granted, some classes, like high school calculus, don't require much studying. If you just pay attention in class and do the homework, you'll be ready for the exam. But there are some classes that its good to study for, such as second semester college Spanish. When it comes to studying for a foreign language exam, there are some good ideas, some okay ideas, and some bad ideas.

Bad ideas:
1. Staring at lists of vocabulary, grammar rules, etc. Unless you have photographic memory, staring at lists isn't going to do you much good, unless you can really quickly reproduce the lists on the back of your exam when you first start the exam (okay idea). Most foreign college-level foreign language exams these days are designed around the concept of Communicative Language Learning, so you're mostly going to see fill-in-the-blanks and short-answer questions. When you stare a list you are memorizing the content in a very specific context (a list), and it can be very hard for your brain to apply information stored in lists into questions that require you to understand the context.
2. Not going to class, not doing homework, not paying attention in class, not practicing the language in class, etc. Basically, if you don't do what your instructor tells you to do leading up to the exam, you're shooting yourself in the foot. If they are a good instructor then the exam will be formatted very similarly to the stuff they have been having you do in class and at home.

Okay ideas:
1. Going back over stuff that you did in class and at home. This is okay because you will be studying the content in the type of context in which it will be presented in the exam. However, its not a great method because you have already done it (hopefully). Which means that you already know the right answer (again, hopefully). So its very easy for you to not pay full attention to the context of each item while studying. You will probably find yourself moving very quickly and confidently through the previously completed assignments.
2. Cramming. Okay, no matter how much I hate to admit it, cramming can help...somewhat. Cramming tends to be especially useful if your instructor doesn't use much of an imagination, and you can quickly jot down on the back of your exam the stuff that you have crammed right when the exam starts, before you get confused by the questions on the exam.
3. Look for practice exercises on the web. This one tends to be hit or miss for several reasons. First, you may wind up spending a whole lot of time just looking for the darn things. Second, they may not be formatted the same way you know that your instructor will format the items on your exam. Third, there is usually no guarantee as to the quality of the activities. Sure, there's probably some good stuff out there for studying just about anything in any language. But there's also a lot of crap.
4. Flash cards. Yet another traditional method that isn't bad, but isn't great. Flash cards are better than staring at lists, because you see the items out of order, and you don't see the answer right next to the question. However, they are still repetitious, which means that your brain will tend to have a harder time generalizing the stuff you practice into new contexts, and they are usually not formatted like the items on your exam will be.

Good ideas:
1. Prepare your body. Seriously. You'd be amazed how much better you can do on an exam when you have been eating the right foods, keeping yourself hydrated with water, and getting enough sleep. This page is a good resource on how to do this step.
2. Practice using what you'll be tested on. If you're exam is going to be covering the pluperfect subjunctive and vocabulary related to car parts, then practice making sentences (that make sense) using the pluperfect subjunctive and car parts. My favorite way to do this is to take your flash cards (okay idea) and put them in stacks: one for grammar, and one for vocabulary. Then you draw two cards at random (one from each pile), and write a sentence using those cards. I suggest that you do this a couple dozen times, and then take what you've done to your instructor's office hours and ask them to let you know how you're doing (i.e. where you screwed up.)
3. Doing the opposite of Bad Idea #2. If its already exam time, then it is too late to do this step, but if you still have a while, then you might seriously think about doing what your instructor expects you to do both in and out of class. If you don't believe me, you haven't tried it.

How do you address your professor?

I came across this interesting study several semesters ago. These psychologists looked at how graduate students in the US address their professors...according to the gender of the professor. Here is the abstract that provides a quick synopsis of their findings:

College students participated in two studies assessing differences in terms of address for male and female professors (i.e., first name vs. title) and the implications of the terms selected. In Study 1, 243 students reported their terms of address for professors of their present classes. As predicted, the probability of being addressed by title was significantly greater for male professors than female professors. In Study 2, 120 students read and answered questions about a transcript of a class session ostensibly taught by a male or female professor whom students addressed by first name or title. Professors were perceived to hold higher status when addressed by title, regardless of their gender. Female, but not male, professors addressed by title were perceived to be less accessible. These findings suggest that female professors hold lower status than male professors and must often choose between perceptions of status versus accessibility.

It's kind of scary that something like this happens (albeit subconsciously) among a group as educated as graduate students. Of course, its hard to spot these subconscious biases within ourselves. Which is why its good that studies like this are conducted in order to raise awareness.

Reading Books for Language Learning and Pleasure: The Do's and Do Not's

When people decide to try learning a language by reading books that they already enjoy they often make the mistake of starting with books that are for (young) adults. For example, the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Normally I would suggest that you read a book targeting a younger audience first. Something like the Warriors books by Erin Hunter, which is targeted at preteens, but is still enjoyed by many adults. I would recommend this for several reasons: the grammar will be simpler, the vocabulary will be simpler, and, most importantly, the plot will be simpler (seriously). And I would suggest that you read it all the way through in English, and then, if you liked it, read it all the way through in the language. In my experience trying to jump back and forth after each sentence or paragraph is just frustrating because it feels more like language learning than enjoyment, and this strategy will work best if you are enjoying the process of reading the book itself.

Also, while going through the books, don't try to understand everything in the language. That's another (very) common mistake. When you start you should be reading and be thinking "I think this is the part where he shot the gun" not "And then he grabbed the gun and fired five shots very quickly into the opposing line." Think of it like watching a movie that you like in the language. You're not going to get all of what is said, but you can still follow along with the plot. Focus on the plot, not on the language. If you start to get lost, either backtrack to where you last think you knew roughly what was going on, or skim forward until you think you have picked the trail back up. If you really want to focus on at least some part of the language, then I recommend that you focus on pronouncing each word correctly in your mind (or out loud if you prefer.) But hopefully you will eventually be so interested in reading the story that even slowing down to pronounce each word correctly will get frustrating, and you'll start just focusing more on the meaning. Also, if you really want to understand more, then you can do the back and forth method, but I recommend that you do it by chapter rather than paragraph, that way when you finish reading in one language you are at a natural stopping point, and it won't feel so forced and it will be easier to remember what was going on when you switch back. Basically, it will still feel like a normal reading process, rather than a forced exercise. Your brain does not like to work. But it likes to play. And, ironically, it does basically the same thing in both situations: learn, practice, and overcome challenges.

Finally, keep in mind that your mind is doing double/triple duty while reading in a new language. So don't be surprised if you can't binge-read like you can in English. Your brain needs time (sleep) to assimilate what it is learning about the language. I would only read until you start to feel frustrated/bored/tired, and then I would mark exactly where you are stopping and scribble a quick note in English about what exactly is going on right there. Again, if you force yourself to read a specific amount each day/week/hour, then you will very quickly burn yourself out and I very much doubt that you will finish the book. Make it fun and relaxing, and take your time to enjoy the process. Hmmm... have I emphasized that enough yet?  ;-)

Where to get Movies and Books in Your Langauge

If you decide to learn a language by watching movies you already enjoy in that language then you are likely to eventually start purchasing DVDs that are dubbed in the new language because the ones that you have right now are not dubbed in that language. For example, I'm slowly replacing my non-spanish dubbed dvds with spanish-dubbed ones.Some languages, like Spanish, have an unfair advantage, but there are still quite a few dvds in the US that are not even dubbed in Spanish. Often I can't even find them on Amazon.es or Amazon.mx. So I've been buying them from an online store in Spain and an online store in Mexico and I've found one on eBay (the hard part was finding the online stores, but once I did it was definitely worth the effort!) I also purchased a region-free player (Toshiba BDX1300 DVD & Blu-Ray Player) which works really well so far (I've been using it almost daily for several months). Finally, I've purchased almost all of the Terry Pratchett books that I've been reading in Spanish on Amazon, but most of them have been shipped from England.

One last note, be aware that sometimes a dvd description on Amazon or other website may say that it is dubbed in the language, but it really isn't. That's because of different versions of the same dvd. This has happened with me with dvds that were identified as dubbed in Spanish in the Amazon description, but aren't really dubbed in Spanish. So far I think I've received around 4 dvds like this.  This is another reason I've moved on to using almost only the online stores in Spain and Mexico, because all their dvds so far have definitely had Spanish dubbing.

Having Fun While Language Learning On Your Own

So, learning a language is getting challenging, eh? Don't you hate it when stuff starts to get harder?

Most people only become proficient in a second language if they use it in a meaningful way on a regular basis. The problem is that "meaningful" can be very different for different people. If you really want to keep learning a language then here are a few ideas of how to make the process and/or end result more meaningful, and therefore increase your motivation.

- Plan a trip to a country where they speak your language in like a year or whenever, now your studies will be preparing you for something real.

- Start looking for a job in a country where they speak your language, and as soon as you find one, take it. Learn the language by living in a country where they speak your language. A lot of people who take this route look for jobs as English tutors.

- Look for a temporary work-abroad opportunity. The prevalence of these programs will depend on what language you are studying. For example, there are a lot of Spanish-speaking countries that have short-term projects that you can be a part of, such as service missions, while these are much less frequent in industrialized European countries.

- Just start doing everything you can in your language. Watch all movies/tv shows in the language, read all books in the language, play video games in the language, switch all your computer/phone settings to the language, etc. Basically, do whatever you do for fun in the language. Note: whatever you do for fun now. Don't try to do this step by trying to adopt pasttimes from a target culture. A lot of people try this but it usually doesn't work out well. So, for example, there are a lot of tv shows and movies in Spanish which are produced in Spain, Mexico, and Argentina, but I never watch any of them. I do however watch a lot of Hollywood movies in Spanish, such as Jurassic Park, Tremors, the Avengers, Bourne, etc. You will pick up a lot more of the language, and you'll be more motivated to learn if you are doing something that you already enjoy. But do keep a dictionary handy, you will want it occasionally (like when you notice a word that is being used a lot).

- Interact with others in the language. This one would probably be the hardest for me. If you're living in the country, then you are forced to use language, so you don't have to go out of your way (other than going out of your way to move to the country), but with this one what you do is look for language speakers where you live right now. Which means that you have to start trying to make friends, volunteering, etc. that you normally wouldn't. A lot of people take this approach, but I'm not a big fan. I much prefer the other methods where you don't have to leave the comfort of your social bubble.

- And, of course, the classic is to date/marry a language speaker. But if you ask me trying to find someone to date/marry just so that you can practice a language is a bit extreme. Also, there tend to be unforeseen cultural barriers, such as the preconception of the role of the woman in a relationship.

Finally, be prepared for the normal process of language learning and don't let it discourage you. You will begin with interference from English, as well as some influence from the new language in English. The interference isn't usually too severe in either direction, but it can be very noticeable to the language learner. Language learning usually is kind of a cyclic process. You'll have a breakthrough, start getting a lot, it will be exciting, then you'll plateau for a while, this will be a little frustrating after the rush of the breakthrough, and then you'll regress for a while, this can be very discouraging because your new language will actually get worse for a while. This is normal and we think it happens because your brain is trying to break apart its concept of the new language in order to incorporate the next thing you'll be learning. (Your subconscious sees it coming but you don't. An example would be your brain getting ready to adopt the new language's way of conjugating verbs by throwing out its current concept of the language's verb conjugations (which originally is largely based on English conjugations), during this process you will find it very hard to conjugate anything correctly in the language). Then you'll have a breakthrough again, etc.