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.