Linking Meaning and Language

This longer chapter introduced the concept of the hollistic program, whose intent is to focus less on grammar, and join language production and content while teaching. That is to say, by doing certain activities that engage the learner on multiple levels (not just filling out exercises), they overall take away a deeper understanding of the language. This is a huge part of what I’m trying to accomplish – I hope for the users to learn almost unconsciously through games.

There are four different skills that language learners obtain and practice: Reading, Listening, Speaking, and Writing. Speaking and writing are active skills (the learner creates their own content in their foreign language), whereas reading and listening are passive skills (the learner focuses on understanding). This part of the chapter was very interesting because it mentioned how what affects long versus short-term memory. I would guess the little word games would be more vocabulary reinforcing, but ultimately would fit into short-term memory. When it comes to the goal of language retention, I will be focusing more on long-term memory skills. Things that aid in long-term memory include assignments outside of class and working with longer texts. In other words, long term memory functions are activated when the reader must synthesis larger quantities of information (>500 words) (36). I feel the interactive storybooks will be fantastic for this, as their length can be easily altered, and they will also include visual to help synthesize an understanding of the work. Additionally, since I am planning on making interactive games based off of original foreign works and fairy tales, there will be a certain amount of cultural context as well. It would be an added bonus for users to add to their bicultural perspective as well as simple language use. It certainly seems that these should be the very first apps I strive to create come the summer.

There is, however, an inherent disadvantage to my future site, in that the primary skill utilized is reading. There is no easy way to improve writing skills other than through traditional FIB exercises online, and while speaking with other users could eventually become a possibility, it would first have to, well, gain a userbase interested in doing so. Certainly some of the games will have audio, but it is not the same thing as, say, watching a film or news program. I wold like to incorporate more audio-based games/exercises, but there is the roadblock in terms of copyright for pre-recorded media, and there is a lack of native speakers for original content. Even though audio-based items are not the priority, it is something I still want to think about for the future.