PRE2017 3 Groep9 - Game Concept

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Concepts behind the game

Studies have shown that it’s much easier to link an image to a word, than another word. Most schools and traditional language courses teach would teach you words like this:

Paard Horse

However the brain memorizes it a lot easier if you would do it like this instead:

Paard Not only does this connect the word to the actual concept, but also is it actually easier for the brain to remember the word. Our game will make heavy use of not only this image connection to learn the word, but also to learn other aspects of it like gender and conjugation groups. This will be done via so called “Mnemonics”, they are basically little scenarios you make in your mind to remember something. For example to learn the gender of the word Torta in Italian, you would imagine the scenario of stepping into a pie and pink filling coming out of it.

These “Mnemonics” are one of the fundamental methods of game based learning, since games are always based around learning in scenarios and through experience. Another fundamental concept of game-based learning is that of using the thing you want to learn as a tool, not as the end goal. This way you can give meaning to the thing that you are trying to learn.

As can be seen, our game will make use of the fundamentals of game-based learning and apply them in a more specific way to the learning of words. This is a general method in which most educational games work.

The Game

Our game will revolve around learning words in Italian. In the demo we are going to build we are teaching the player 15 words, 5 easy words, 5 medium words and 5 hard words. For every word there is a small game. To show how the game works we go through the example word “Torta” meaning pie in italian. First the word is shown on screen while an audio clip of someone pronouncing the word is played too.

After this 6 images come on the screen, 1 of these is the correct image, an image of a pie, the player has to click on the correct image, there is also a choice below for what the correct gender of the word is.

After this little test. A “micro game” starts, which is a mini game of about 1-3s long. In the micro game for “Torta” we play out the pie-smashing scenario, the player controls a foot and when they press a button the foot smashes what is below it. Since there are both blue and pink pies the player has to only smash the pink pies to succeed in this micro game. After playing this game they will not only remember the word better, because of this peculiar game, but also will they remember the gender because of the mnemonic.