Chitetris: A Chinese Proverb Learning Game Utilizing Tetris Game Plot

2010 IEEE International Conference on Digital Game and Intelligent Toy Enhanced Learning

Chitetris: A Chinese Proverb Learning Game Utilizing Tetris Game Plot Tsung Teng Chen Graduate Institute of Information Management, National Taipei University, Taipei, Taiwan [email protected] were very domain specific to Tetris shapes and did not transfer to other spatial tasks, suggesting that at least the physical benefits of video game do not transfer widely. In an early attempt to use video game learning to inform cognitive science theory, Kirsh & Maglio [5] used Tetris play to argue against an information processing view of cognition, pointing out that such games draw more directly on perception than on computational actions in the head. They demonstrated that human brains also do not abide by the sense– model–plan–act framework. In playing the video game Tetris, actions are often epistemic. Unlike pragmatic actions, they do not reduce the distance to the goal. Instead, they reduce or simplify computation by offloading mental tasks to the environment. For example, rotating a game piece physically can save the effort of rotating it mentally and simplify the mental task of matching the piece to a contour. Physical rotations can even be used to identify a piece before it has fully appeared. Kirsh and Maglio [6] also showed that such physical rotation, followed by direction perceptual comparison of the polygon and the available target slots, is more time-efficient than the corresponding mental rotation. As an individual player's skill increases from novice to expert, the frequency of such "extraneous" moves increases. Chinese proverbs, which epitomize Chinese history and culture, are a treasure of Chinese language. They are often four-character expressions that are used to sum up a particular situation. The moral of this particular situation may give us guidance in our everyday life. Since Chinese proverbs epitomized rich Chinese history and traditions, the effective way of learning Chinese proverbs is one of the most discussed issues in Chinese teaching in Taiwanese primary schools. Some teacher still suggest using the traditional way to compose a proverb manually by selecting four Chinese characters and arranging them into a proverb on a blackboard [7] as shown in Figure 1.

Abstract Tetris is a popular game available on almost every computer platform. A Tetris segment is made up of four rectangular blocks, which fits rightly with a fourcharacter Chinese proverb. We utilize the Tetris game plot and design the Chitetris game – an interactive and extensible Chinese proverb learning platform. The Chitetris game augments the spatial recognition and manipulation game elements of Tetris with the glyph recognition and semantic synthesis elements. We believe the Chitetris game offer an interactive, interesting, and engaging Chinese proverb learning environment that will enthuse student players.

1. Introduction Tetris is a popular puzzle game invented by Alexey Pazhitnov in 1985 [1]. Its name is derived from the Greek word "tetra" meaning four, as all of the Tetris segments (a.k.a. tetrominoes) are made up of four rectangular blocks. During the game playing, seven randomly generated tetrominoes or tetrads fall down the playing field. The objective of the game is to manipulate these tetrominoes with the aim of creating a horizontal line of blocks without gaps. When such a line is created, the line of blocks disappears, and the blocks above (if any) fall to blocks beneath the disappeared line of blocks or the bottom of the playing field. As the game progresses, the tetrominoes may fall faster, and the game ends when the stack of tetrominoes reaches the top of the playing field. Tetris consistently appears on lists of the greatest video games of all time; it is believed to be the best selling game ever, due to its wide availability on almost every modern computer and game system made [2]. Tetris has been the focus of several psychological studies of cognitive benefits from video games. Antoniette, Rasi, & Underwood [3] used Tetris to study expert strategies for hand-eye coordination and meta-cognitive monitoring. Sims & Mayer [4] also studied skilled Tetris players and found that their skills 978-0-7695-3993-5/10 $26.00 © 2010 IEEE DOI 10.1109/DIGITEL.2010.34

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Figure 1. Learning Chinese proverb by selecting and arranging four Chinese characters into a proverb on a blackboard

2. The design of Tetris-based Chinese proverbs learning system

Figure 3. Tetrominoes are labeled with Chinese proverbs

A Chinese character glyph is also referred as a kind of “square character” since it fits perfectly well in squares as shown in Figure 2. Unlike its counter fonts in Western language, each Western Latin character in a proportional font may be fitted in a glyph-bounding box of varying size.

Figure 4. The bottom line of blocks would have been disappeared in a traditional Tetris game

A format sheet with the margins and placement

A line of blocks won’t disappear from the playing field unless a Chinese proverb is found in it. Figure 5 shows the situation that a Chinese proverb is found, and Figure 6 shows the line of blocks with the Chinese proverb disappeared afterward.

Figure 2. Chinese characters fit in bounding boxes of equal size As we have mentioned earlier, all of the tetrominoes are made up with four rectangular blocks, which can be seamlessly served as the four glyph bounding boxes of a four-character Chinese proverb. The orientation of the Chinese characters themselves will not change when a tetromino is rotated.

2.1. Tetrominoes proverbs

labeled

with

Chinese

As shown in Figure 3, each of the tetrominoes is filled in with a Chinese proverb. The bottom line of squares would have been disappeared from the playing field in the original Tetris game since the line has been filled with blocks, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 5. A Chinese proverb is highlighted with a bounding rectangle

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2.4. A tailorable and extensible platform Since the Chinese proverbs are plenty, and some of their meaning may be difficult for students in the lower grades to grasp. We may tailor sets of proverbs suitable for a particular audience. Additional internal or external explanatory information may be linked up when a proverb is spelled out to enrich the learning experience. A spelled-out proverb may also be spoken out by voice to further facilitate the language learning. Once a player spells out a specific proverb correctly, this proverb may be removed from the running proverb sets so that the newly generated tetrominoes are labeled with new proverbs. The game may progressively adjust itself to accommodate the learning progress of a player.

Figure 6. The line of blocks with a Chinese proverb disappeared from Figure 5

2.2. The playing modes

3. Conclusion

The Chitetris game has four playing modes. The first mode is the same as the original Tetris game that the player manipulates these tetrominoes to fill a line of blocks. In the second mode, the player has to spell out a Chinese proverb from these labeled tetrominoes to eliminate a (possibly unfilled) line of blocks with the proverb in it. The condition for the line of blocks to disappear is the existence of a proverb rather than a filled line of blocks. The third mode is equivalent to the OR condition of the mode one and two, a line of boxes disappears when the line is filled or a proverb is found in the line. The fourth mode is equivalent to the AND condition of the mode one and two, i.e., the condition for a line of blocks to disappear includes: (1) a line of blocks is filled and (2) at least one proverb is found in this line of blocks. The fourth mode is considered the most difficult mode since the player needs to juggle two things together.

We have designed a Chinese proverb learning game utilizing Tetris’s game plot. A four-character Chinese proverb fits perfectly well with a tetromino that consists of four blocks. The Chitetris game is in line with the academic arguments on digital games and learning [8] that, games should evoke enjoyment, engagement, and motivation to learn. We believe the Chitetris game will provoke engagement and motivate players to learn Chinese proverbs for them to gain high scores. The learning of Chinese proverb, an important undertaking for understanding Chinese culture and traditions, is still mostly carried out in a way not utilizing the rich digital learning paradigm currently available. We believe the Chitetris game offer an interactive, interesting, and engaging Chinese proverb learning environment that will enthuse young students in primary schools. Our Chitetris game augments the spatial recognition and manipulation game elements of Tetris with the glyph recognition and semantic synthesis elements. The empirical evidence for the effectiveness of the Chitetris game in helping pupils to learn Chinese proverb will be collected and analyzed in a following up study.

2.3. The merits of the game A Tetris player may enhance his/her hand-eye coordination and spatial skills. A Chitetris player will inherit all the benefit of the Tetris player and more. A player needs to quickly recognize all the Chinese characters on the tetrominoes blocks and find a matching proverb and drop the tertromino to the right position. In addition to the spatial skills, a Chitetris player requires the semantically related skills. One of the seven tetrominoes – the vertical bar tertromino will give a plain Chinese proverb without any further manipulation. This may serve as a hint for a proper proverb, if the player does not know the proverb yet. The other six tetrominoes, all of which contains a Chinese proverb, need to be manipulated to spell out a proverb in a horizontal line of blocks.

4. References [1] F. Paul, "At 25, Tetris still eyeing growth," in Reuters, 2009. [2] "Tetris," Wikipedia, 2009. [3] A. Antoniette, C. Rasi, and J. Underwood, "Do video games enhance strategic thinking," Ricerche di Psicologia, vol. 25, pp. 125-144, 2002. [4] V. Sims and R. Mayer, "Domain specificity of spatial expertise: the case of video game players,"

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[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

Applied Cognitive Psychology, vol. 16, pp. 97115, 2002. D. Kirsh and P. Maglio, "On distinguishing epistemic from pragmatic action," Cognitive Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal, vol. 18, pp. 513-549, 1994. P. P. Maglio and D. Kirsh, "Epistemic action increases with skill," in Proceedings of the eighteenth annual conference of the cognitive science society, La Jolla, California, 1996, pp. 391-396. F. Liu, "Happy Chinese Proverb Teaching and Learning," Retrieved 12th August 2009 from http://king.kl.edu.tw/modules/xfsection/article.php ?articleid=2. H. C. Hsiao, "A Brief Review of Digital Games and Learning," in The First IEEE International Workshop on Digital Game and Intelligent Toy Enhanced Learning, Jhongli, Taiwan, 2007, pp. 124-129.

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