Meaning and Lyrics: Proposed Ideas for Enhancing the Use of Music in Language Learning

Who can deny that at some point we have wandered halls and streets with a catchy tune stuck in our heads?  Perhaps, trying to sing along even though you are not entirely sure what the real lyrics are?  Many an argument has been had over “lock the cashbox” or “rock the casbah.”  Even more intriguing is the prevalence of Spanish songs such as La Cucaracha, Feliz Navidad, and La Bamba in American society. Almost every American has heard these songs, recognizes the toe-tapping beat, but has barely an idea about what they really mean.  (Other than the use of Feliz Navidad only during the holidays – that does help provide some clue). 

Many people have cited music as an integral part in their second language practice. I do agree with the usefulness of having a tune in a foreign language that you can sing along with. While great for becoming acclimated to the phonetics of a language, this has quite limited use for helping learners acquire true meaning, especially when considering the high number of metaphorical and poetic uses of the language in music.  

Kindle Paperwhite Dictionary tool

Let me jump to another useful tool for just a moment. While not focused on language learning, I have recently discovered the joy that is Kindle reading.  Of course it's lovely to have novels so portable, so weightless and always within reach.  But my intrigue has been most greatly piqued by the ability to click on a word and have the dictionary definition provided, all in a single touch.  

The interesting thing is that following extended use of this feature, I found myself attempting to use it in other respects - where of course - it did not work.  The primary instance of this has been during work when I listen to Spanish music on Pandora in an attempt to augment my language skills.  I often opt to expand the lyrics section to read along while I listen. 

The interesting part is I found myself wanting to click, even trying sometimes, to select words within the Spanish lyrics and hoping that the translation in context would pop up, the same as a meaning in the form of a dictionary entry would pop up in my Kindle books.  I would remember that this is not Kindle and resign to looking up the phrase elsewhere.  

Yet on this thought, I offer the situation as thought for future language educators and developers.  What if we could listen to popular music in our target language, read along with the lyrics, and have access to meaning-in-context via translation for further assistance?






**Addendum: June 22, 2014

As of recent I have connected with some wonderful people over at Linguistadores. It is a terrific new startup for people looking to learn a language from home at their own pace. The site has integrated a feature that allows you to watch/listen to a song, follow the lyrics, and see translations of the lyrics as you go.  Pretty much exactly the feature I was suggesting in this blog. I am so excited to see this and look forward to working with them.

I will likely write a post dedicated to this site soon, but in the mean time, please take a second to check them out.

Searching For Answers Proves Search Is the Answer

I'm sure anyone who has ever taken a language class heard the demanding voice of a teacher commanding that the Internet will feed us lies, make us dependent, and is never to be trusted.  Of course, the few times someone did attempt to use a translator the results were almost immediately caught by those same teachers.

However, with the growing accuracy and intuitive nature of the Internet (and a little direction from instructors), we may be able to harness this power for good.  We often snicker at the silly, surprising, yet often times incredible accuracy of Google's autofill feature in search.  While it can be very entertaining, there are limitless benefits to reap form Google's recent transition to a more natural style search.

Google teaches that "necesito" can be paired with infinitives, nouns, and comparatives

As this feature became more and more expected, I found myself relying on it to fill in gaps in my knowledge.  Google's reach has undeniably grown in breadth and accuracy.  Yet many forget to account for the rapid international spread as well.

I have found myself able to account for use of pronouns and phrasal structures in Spanish by starting to type a phrase and allowing autofill to complete the phrase.  Of course, as per our instructors, this is still not ideal for full sentence or paragraph translations, but can be incredibly helpful for those working through an assignment and hoping to look for help from home.

Of course, there are also various other lovely sources that were largely underutilized in my early years learning a language.  Along the same lines of using the search engine itself, students can use reference sites such as Linguee and forums like on WordReference to utilize the same concept - the wisdom of the crowd.  In this way, students are not denied use of the Internet, but instead use it to find for themselves what is really used by native speakers and can see the "translation" in context.

In a way, search can serve as a sort of artificial at-home tutor.  It is just as stubborn toward giving us the answers, but always eager to provide instructions and encourage us to draw conclusions for ourselves.  Search provides definitions across countries, corpus style examples taken from all types of media, as well as real life input and commentary by native speakers.  I could easily see this being implemented in classes and encouraged to supplement course content and am eager to see how teachers will address student use of the Internet moving forward.

Second Life Making the Most of Life

I recently came across an article that cited a shocking dynamic. Although each day more and more people are seemingly glued to their smartphones, laptops, and tablets, the number of young people actively pursuing a knowledge of computer science has been dropping. I can cite from experience that despite the nearly impossible job market, at least in my South Florida region, there are increasing pleas for students in tech-related fields.

Educators have thus begun attempting to bridge this crevasse and have turned to venues that were previously considered to be distractions for help. Rather than fight the interest students have in spending hours on various games and websites, many professors are utilizing virtual realities such as Second Life as supplemental class time. I have personally had the pleasure of working together with a handful of brilliant people who greatly contributed to generating digital learning realms within Second Life and exploring the extents of their use in foreign language learning, Spanish in particular. Teachers are able to invest in "land" in the digital world and build a reality best suited to fit the learning goals.  A hacienda style villa, such as that developed by Dr. James Abraham, can provide cultural context for learning Spanish, with tasks designed to practice forms.  But this is only the beginning, with larger universities expending resources on building virtual libraries and resource centers for their students and creating distance learning modules.

Practice Spanish Screenshot

There is certainly something to keep an eye on in the realm of realities such as Second Life, that allow students a glimpse into the themes and concepts they study in class.  Such realities are spurring waves of role playing serious games, such as the "Practice" series by McGraw Hill and the "Practice Spanish" installment that I have the opportunity to advise on.  I am truly excited to see how the increase in these games affects the educational scene and curious as to what impression teachers and students alike will have to their use.

For those still wondering and with reservations about creating an account to view Second Life, the "Practice Spanish" demo is available here.

References:

Ritzema, Harris. The Use of Second Life for Distance Education. 2008.

Your Time, Your Language

There are always various computer or mobile platform based games and tools for language learning. We have dictionary and translator apps galore (albeit, we are often warned by professors against using such translators).  But sometimes these ready made lessons on the fly are all we have the time for.  There are stay-at-home parents, full time employees and busy adults everywhere who either don't have the time or simply don't have the confidence to enroll in a semester of language study.  So is there any truly viable alternative?

I recently encountered the mobile app and computer based program Duolingo via a CNET article on best Android language apps.  I thought it was all very interesting but the blurb was incredibly brief and I have an iphone rather than Android phone.  However this program was brought to my attention again another day. I work part time at a bookstore and was assisting a woman who was looking for Spanish workbooks to try and retrieve her previously fluent Spanish skills.  She was perhaps around 50 years of age, well spoken and certainly did not seem to be even considering registering for college courses.  I mentioned to her I had read about Duolingo, but that I found it under an article for Android.  She then laughed and pulled out her iphone, on which she had the app.  Thus, I discovered it is also available for Apple platforms and that this somewhat elderly woman actually ventured to use the program. She continued to explain she uses it on her computer as well and very much enjoyed the program.

After this encounter I decided to look a little more seriously at this app. It seems hard to believe that a little time clicking through a game would improve Spanish skills to any serious degree, and particularly I was curious about how it could help someone who used to be fluent.

According to the study conducted in 2012, testing a sample of exactly half men and women and whose average age was 34.9 years, such a program does indeed exist.  Not only did a great majority of the subjects report favorable interest in the program during their use, but there were significant gains in Spanish knowledge.  Their progress was tested by looking at pre- and post-test scores on WebCAPE (Web Based Computer Adaptive Placement Exam).  This is the same sort of test used to place students into the appropriate level of language course at the university level.

Over a period of eight weeks using this program, students showed an average of 8.1 pt improvement per one hour of study on Duolingo.  The conclusion was that through 26-49 hours of study, one could theoretically progress to a level equivalent to that of one semester of college language coursework.  Considering that 55.3% of the participants were full-time employees, this alternative is a great relief as compared to an in-person course, which often requires students to meet four days a week for at least an hour.  Adding in the driving and parking time for these classes, costs of gas, supplies, textbooks etc. the mobile app alternative would be much welcomed.  Another interesting factor that significantly affected the results was the reason for studying. Although the majority were using the app for personal interest, it was instead those who studied for travel that showed the highest improvement.

I suppose here my only questions would be how this translates into speaking ability as the tests did not include an assessment of spoken proficiency, and any in-person classwork would provide and enhance that aspect. I also wonder why such a large gap (26-49 hours) to cite an "average" time needed to equate to one semester class.  Over a testing period of only 8 weeks, it seems a large range to conclude with.  Finally, although not necessarily a question, I agree with the research conclusion that recommends Duolingo include a clock to record hours spent in a week/month/etc. of time studying. A user may not realize that any hiatus taken due to busy schedules may be as long as it has, and any language teacher would agree that below a certain time (in the case of this study, 2 hours a week) the study would not help improve skills in any way.

Overall, I would say between this study, CNET reviews, and the nice woman at the bookstore, we can conclude that there is an option for self study that amounts to actual language improvement and one of this options would include Duolingo.

Language on the Go

One of my primary motivations for studying education (particularly language in my case) and technology is to consider where it might go. I constantly have experienced and seen in others a complacency about language learning. This is especially true of English speakers, which has come to be accepted as a pretty much fact.  Combined with a rising tendency to multitask, often misconstrued by traditional educators as form of ADD in students, there is a growing population who have simply decided that language learning is not convenient and therefore not likely for them. And in a world that increasingly speaks English, many who become discouraged by the tediousness of language learning simply decide it isn't worth the effort.

I, however, believe we can use the tendency of people to multitask and the likelihood of them always having some sort of mobile tool on hand to our advantage.  Part of this is in the need to be working on something and/or entertain ourselves. How many with a smartphone would voluntarily sit waiting for a friend silently with the phone discretely put away? More likely you are scanning articles on BBC, checking emails, or even just playing Angry Birds. It doesn't really matter what you are doing, as long as you are doing something.

Image from Tip Tap Tones - referenced below

It is this market of time in a person's day that some developers have chosen to utilize.  The designers of an app called "Tip Tap Tones" have created a mobile "microtraining" game that can be utilized during fragments of free time throughout the day.

Researchers cite one of the most difficult aspects of learning Mandarin to be the perception of tones. Often the first year or two of university level language study is dedicated to understanding this complex and often entirely novel sound system.  Anyone familiar with the Critical Period Hypothesis knows that many believe part of our ability to learn a language fully is due to exposure. We do not even need to know what a sound means, but the fact we have heard it makes it likely to be learned in the future. On the other hand, lack of exposure before puberty results in a near impossibility to fully acquire given phonetic distinctions.  Relating to a child's first language acquisition, infants show signs of understanding the words, voice, and tone of a parent figure before they can speak.  This is due to the fact that they are able to hear and begin to perceive sounds even while still in the womb.  Much of our difficulty as English speakers with a language such as Mandarin is that this language is tonal. It heavily relies on tone and inflection for basic meaning distinctions rather than simply an expressive tool.  We may know that a rising inflection is a question, but even then we play around with the tone in our own speech, without our meaning being misconstrued in any way. In Mandarin Chinese however, the case is very different. As English speakers, most of us having never encountered a tonal language, our ears are simply not experienced to distinguish between tones because in our language it is of little importance.  Therefore, in learning a language such as this, the first thing to focus on is mere exposure and exercises in perception. We cannot be expected to reproduce differences we cannot hear.

The idea presented by Tip Tap Tones is a level based game that steadily increases in difficulty as the learner-player accumulates points.  In this way, they have managed to take one of the most complex and time consuming aspects of learning a given foreign language, and provided a simple, fun way for learners to practice  and learn without the feeling they have to make any heavy investment on time.  The results showed an average of 25% increase in ability to correctly identify tones in around 71 minutes of gameplay, spread over only three weeks. I'd certainly invest in having access to that app over mindlessly launching birds from a slingshot any day.

They concluded, "we have shown how our design of mobile microtraining has transformed a slow-paced, low-feedback drill into a fast-paced, high-feedback, learner-driven game playable abywhere."
*This app is available as a free Microsoft Research application on the Windows Phone marketplace.

This sort of quick, on the go access to language learning is the sort of concept that I have always been interested in. Is it possible to take a task that previously required years and years of classroom hours and homework drills, listening to a single voice for days upon days repeating information and transform it into something versatile, quick, and fun?  Why yes it certainly is. Given the variety of environments we now have access to, the fact that the classroom is no longer confined to an actual classroom, and the digital world allows a connection to unlimited voices and speakers we can transform this task quite easily with the help of applications such as Tip Tap Tones. Tones may be the aspect of beginning Mandarin that requires the most time and focus, but now that time can be spread out and easily completed throughout the user's normal day.  Focused classroom time or interaction can now be spent on vocabulary or other lessons, allowing the student to always be moving forward.  As we open our minds to possibilities such as mobile microtraining we can redefine the language curriculum and credit the learner with individualized training at their own discretion, which often gives learners more motivation and confidence to continue.

Reference: Tip Tap Tones: Mobile Microtraining of Mandarin Sounds.  (2012).

 MobileHCI’12, September 21–24, 2012, San Francisco, CA, USA. 

Learner Motivation in MMORPGs - Research Review

I had the wonderful opportunity this week to read an article by a fellow serious game advocate that will be published.  What was nearly as interesting as the article itself, was the timing of being able to read this just after my previous posting. I feel his research was actually very relevant to the concept of game attitudes and refocusing our attention on the needs they meet and the benefits provided by games toward learning.  Min Lun Wu's article is intriguing in several ways to a field of research that is still relatively new and emerging.  He and his team chose to study casual and non-gamers interests rather than the opinions of students who play regularly.  In looking at MMORPGs which often have a high learning curve and are intimidating to non-players, this is a step in the right direction toward understanding real-world implications of implementing these games.  Additionally, rather than jumping the gun and looking at vocabulary increases or actual effects of the game, it questions the very basis of why we should use them and attempts to empiricize the factors associated with this issue.  While effects are very important, I believe we have to fully explore the basic principles and reasoning involved in using games in order to work toward a truly digital learning environment in a world where traditional lessons still rule.

While my own work focused on sociocultural theory, his research isolated the motivations for games and how that may relate to learning.  This research is framed in self-determination theory and Yee's 10 subcomponents of motivation.  Both of these formats identify a need for autonomy, challenge, and socialization.  Upon concluding the findings of which aspects of motivation were provided by the game, Min Lun Wu's article also investigated what benefits toward language acquisition were actually perceived by the players.  The overlapping factor was the aspect of socialization and teamwork, and this is wherein lies the strongest benefit of games to learning, and especially in language learning. I have also identified a strong correlation between the social communities of games and the scaffolding effect required by sociocultural theory for learning. This is one of the major necessities for language learning, a need often unmet by traditional classrooms with an instructor-audience dynamic. Of course teachers attempt to provide an environment for interaction but in the real world, students are shy, nervous, anxious about their skills or how they will be perceived, and in all honesty they are only able to spend time practicing with other students of the language who may not even be able to provide the correction and feedback that is needed.

Games provide access to an entire world of native speakers of the target language, which is something that traditional classes will most likely never be able to provide.  This article will provide essential foundation to the world of serious games by empiriczing the issues often brought up only as theory. Of course research students as myself can say that theoretically, games have the assets that are deemed necessary by researchers and theorists on education. However, to utilize more than one framework on motivation, including those that have been applied to fields outside of education and allow non-gamers the opportunity to personally identify where they see benefit and value in games both as it relates to motivation theories as well as how they believe it does via open-ended questions allows us a very different sort of insight into the role games can play.

But: here are some questions as food for thought that I keep coming back to in reading any research on the matter.

1. What are the issues related to balancing the main benefit of MMORPGs, to me the huge player base which provides the scaffolding opportunities, with the extreme lack of player base in any language other than English?  Of course this is beneficial for ESL, but can it ever be extended to a large group of American language learners- students trying to meet foreign language requirements or learning languages for careers?

2. What is the true availability of these games?  Many such as World of Warcraft actually have a pretty steep expense of $15 a month after the first few levels, which for non-players may be just enough to discourage learners.

3. Is there room and is it worth it to customize content in the form of an MMORPG?  In addition to customizing for language or availability - what about the language that students actually encounter?  Many issues, as identified by Min Lun Wu, include archaic language (many of these games have a medieval theme and include archaic English terms), topics that are rather isolated to the game world (guild, ogre, warlock, etc.), and the issue of players avoiding communicative opportunities.  Sometimes due to an underdeveloped confidence in ability to play the game and complete quests, a player may avoid combat or competition in game and thus lose the opportunity to practice this sort of communication and the need to work in a team to accomplish said goals. While players often appreciate the ability to discover their world, walking around a forest and shooting at the wildlife for gold coins and increased mana will not provide the quality interaction that is necessary for language development. How do we ensure that the gameplay provides language content that is actually relevant for use outside the gaming realm?

4. Lastly there is the recurring issue of time.  Given the learning curve, character customization, load time - how valuable is game play as a learning tool? How do we contrast "one hour of game time" with the actual amount of time spent on interaction and thus time toward learning development?  What exactly is it we are testing these games for: use in the classroom, use in place of the classroom (in this case, where will game play occur and when?) or lastly, possibly only as a supplement to traditional classroom learning?  This will determine how beneficial/detrimental the use of games as it pertains to time will be and this is a question that is often avoided.

Overall, this article has definitely provided some very interesting facts and a new perspective on the use of games in language learning and I am very interested to see where it goes.  However, as all great research does, we are left with more questions to answer and I await the response to this call for future research.

Shifting our View of Games

I would like to take a moment to step back from reviews on current technology related issues.  A friend stayed with us this weekend and the topic of games came up.  We met in my MA program, and she is certainly one of the brightest people I know, always favoring books in favor of media. She has an interesting aversion to games, particularly of the video sort. I had to ask, what contributed to her exceptionally negative perception?

She recited anecdotes of boys she knew who would waste their lives away in front of the TV screen, always vying for the latest console.  Sometimes this obsession would continue to the point of causing failed grades and divorces.  I could not deny that at times this is what happens.  But in support of my entire research interests and passion for the idea of migrating learning to the technological field, I had to spend some time contemplating this issue.

I believe what this comes to is an issue of context. We have spent so long separating games from learning.  Children were raised believing that games can only be accessed after learning is done, after lessons are learned.  TV time is rewarded after school and homework and then taken away when grades fall.  Children learn the game is something to be mitigated by authority and relish in the freedom to enjoy themselves when that authority is relinquished in adulthood, causing grown people to often neglect responsibilities and relationships in favor of the ever-denied video game.

So here I propose that one of the first steps as a culture that we need to take in creating serious games and working toward the implementation of learning through technology is to reframe our interpretation of games.  They should no longer be so harshly separated from learning and intellectual goals.  We have some positive aspects in this direction as it is, and parents would do well to focus on the tools currently available. I am talking about those grade level supplemental computer games that children can play and practice vocabulary, memorization, and math at their current school grade level.


Additionally some games marketed solely for entertainment are adding elements of intellect.  A thought recently occurred to me about the promising effect of games such as Assassin's creed, where developers brought together researchers to help contribute to the factual story line.  It's fascinating after having studied abroad in Rome and staying for a weekend in Florence to see the city accurately come alive and to walk the same streets (virtually) in medieval times.  The game also provides options throughout the game at given checkpoints to read bios on the characters incorporated into the game's story who truly existed and places you visit of historical importance including the Medici family, the duomo, and even an explanation about the role of doctors during the time period including commentary on their unique masks.

I believe that in creating an environment for children to experience that games do not conflict with learning, but contribute to it, the two worlds will cease to be at odds.  By encouraging reading, history, math and science into the games they are already playing we can create a world where games are simply another viable option toward an end beneficial to both child and parent.