Language Learning for Visual and Auditory Learners ... - IEEE Xplore

2014 International Conference on Computer Communication and Informatics (ICCCI -2014), Jan. 03 – 05, 2014, Coimbatore, INDIA

Language Learning for Visual and Auditory Learners Using Scratch Toolkit Sanjanaashree P

Anand Kumar M

Soman K.P

Computational Engineering and Networking, Amrita Vishwa Vidhyapeetham, Coimbatore, India. [email protected]



Abstract— In recent years, with the development of technology, life has become very easy. Computers have become the life line of today’s high-tech world. There is no work in our whole day without the use of computers. When we focus particularly in the field of education, people started preferring to e-books than carrying textbooks. In the phase of learning, visualization plays a major role. When the visualization tool and auditory learning comes together, it brings the in-depth understanding of data and their phoneme sequence through animation and with proper pronunciation of the words, which is far better than the people learning from the textbooks and imagining in their perspective and have their own pronunciation. Scratch with its visual, blockbased programming platform is widely used among high school kids to learn programming basics. We investigated that in many schools around the world uses this scratch for students to learn programming basics. Literature review shows that students find it interesting and are very curious about it. This made us anxious towards natural language learning using scratch because of its interesting visual platform. This paper is based on the concept of visual and auditory learning. Here, we described how we make use of this scratch toolkit for learning the secondary language. We also claim that this visual learning will help people remember easily than to read as texts in books and the auditory learning helps in proper pronunciation of words rather than expecting someone's help. We have developed a scratch based tool for learning simple sentence construction of secondary language through primary language. In this paper, languages used are English (secondary language) and Tamil (primary language). This is an enterprise for language learning tool in scratch. This is applicable for other language specific exercises and can be adopted easily for other languages too.

I.

INTRODUCTION

In the present world, younger generation is very comfortable in sending e-mails, playing online games, and surfing the web for learning because of unlimited database available through different resources. The survey claims that students learn loads from Google than studying inside the classroom. But this does not really make them fluent with new technologies. Only few of them can create their own games, animations or simulations. This implies the fact that they can “read” but not “write”. Scratch's vision is to make younger generation realize the fact

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that only programming supports the development of “computational thinking” and only through a program one can communicate to a computer and design own games. It is as simple as “'learn to code and code to learn” [1]. Language learning is a process by which human develop the capacity to perceive new language. When the language learning is done with the help of computers we call it as Computer Aided Language Learning (CALL) [2]. During past two decades, computer based language learning has received increasing attention among educators. The Emigrations, working or studying abroad, linguistic interest and are many reasons behind this [2]. In this digital world, people are accustomed with their electronic gadgets, instead of referring to the pocket dictionary; people started using smart phone's dictionary to find the meaning of a word which is available with pronunciation. Transparently, we can even say we have the world in our pockets. People need everything in handy they do not wish to carry books wherever they go. When it comes for language learning, no one wishes guide book with them [3]. Although there are many tools available in the market for language learning [18], visual learning together with auditory learning always has a prior place. This tool will make scratch more popular among linguistic learners too. This paper starts out in section II with the introduction to Language learning, embellishment of English in India and ends with the consideration of learning disability people view on language learning. Section III explores the requirement to run the project and gives brief explanation about how the language learning is carried out in scratch and the Section IV is conclusion. II.

LANGUAGE LEARNING

Language learning is the systematic approach to understand a language. It is different from language acquisition. Language acquisition is the subconscious process for any native to acquire knowledge in his/her native vernacular language being unaware of grammatical rules [4].


For any language, Language learning comprises of two phases. • •

Understanding the meaning of the words Role of the words in the construction of sentence

To construct a sentence in a language one need to know certain sets of rules in grammar. This paper aimed for the students or language learners to learn basic sentence construction in English through their primary language. Since India is a multi-lingual country, there must be a common language for communication among people of different states. After Indian Independence in 1947, attempts were made to introduce Hindi as the national language of India. Due to protests from other non-Hindi-speaking states, it was decided to temporarily retain English for official purposes until a resolution could be passed regarding the national official language resulting India with no official language. But the Union Government of Republic of India declared its official language as Standard Hindi, while English is the secondary official language [5]. However, the vast majority of population in India speaks Hindi, but English operates as the business language [6]. In India, English medium education has flourished well because of the global standards aimed at by educational Institution. Also, Indian youths are aware that only with excellent English they can get good jobs. This made us choose English for language learning. In English, the sentence construction can be categorized as simple, compound and complex sentence. The simple sentence has a subject and a predicate. It describes only one thing/idea. Compound sentence contains one or more simple sentence with the conjunction (and, or, but). Complex sentence contains two or more verbs and describes more than one thing/idea. In this paper, simple sentence construction is taken for instance. III.

LEARNING STYLES

There is always been a difficulty in secondary language learning. This becomes more difficult for the people with learning disability when the proper guidance is not given. Individuals diagnosed with learning disabilities are not “lazy”. When this is approached in a qualified method, we can enhance child’s education [7], [8]. Students learn things by seeing, hearing and via experiencing first hand. Most of them are amalgamation of the above. But for some students, one of these methods stands out. It’s generally termed as learning disability [9]. The National Institute of Health (NIH) has estimated that the incidence of learning disabilities in general population is 11 to 20 % .There are about 25% of general school-age population are auditory learners, 40% are visual learners, 11% are kinesthetic learners and the remaining 20% are the combination of these[10]. The following describes the three types of learners. A. Auditory Learners Auditory Learners are good listeners. They learn best by hearing information. They are very comfortable with sounds,

rhythm and music in their learning. It is said that the auditory learner will remember 75% of what they hear. They are more interested in group discussion and oral instruction [11], [12]. B. Visual Learners Visual learners rely on the slogan “Show me, I’ll understand”. They like colours and fashion. These students will sometimes struggle during exams, because they feel difficult to recall what “heard” in a lecture. Nevertheless, if they use a colourful test material, they will retain more information. They prefer to charts, to-do list, graphs than listening to a lecture. They will remember 75% of what they see [5], [14]. C. Haptic/Kinesthetic Learners Kinesthetic learners are those who study through experience (via touch and feel) rather than hearing to a lecture or seeing a demonstration. Because of their audacious nature, they find hard to sit in same place for long periods in class rooms. Interactive learning works best with them. Most of the students fall under this category. Learning is made in an excellent way when it is done for these kids [14], [13]. IV.

SCRATCH: A PROGAMMING EDITOR

If the scratch had to be something not on the computer the most common option comes to our mind is “paper” or “sketchbook” because it allows us to do anything we wish it. This is the idea behind scratch software [16]. The scratch was developed for young people aged 8 and up to develop creative learning skills for the twenty-first century [13]. When they create programs, they learn important mathematical For instance, if a kid wants to wish his/her mother on a special occasion, say mother’s day. Instead of forwarding an e-card of someone’s creation he can make his own animated e-card using scratch with the various blocks available like playing sound, flash etc. Scratch is also very efficient in engineering education, with this students can visualize the engineering concepts and the algorithms are best understood by the features available [18]. Scratch is a dubbed language developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology in coordination with the Lifelong Kinder garden Group and was publicly launched in 2006. Their official website (http://scratch.mit.edu) has become a peppy online community, with the slogan “imagine, program, share” [13]. It emboldens youth to program their interactive, games, stories by providing them a platform. The user can drag and drop the blocks instead of typing the code. This is developed on the idea of logos [15]. The Scratch platform is split into following four areas, that is shown in Fig.1: • • • •

A firm stage Blocks palette List of sprites and The script area

The stage is where we can see our scratch creations. It is the back layer that has backdrops (background) and its


corresponding scripts. The sprites can move nowhere than the stage. The Stage is 480 units wide and 360 units tall. It is divided into an x-y grid. The middle of the stage has an xcoordinate of 0 and a y-coordinate of 0. The blocks are dragged from block palette and dropped in the script area. These blocks are stacked up together as pieces of jig-saw puzzle. Series of connected blocks are called scripts.

Figure 1.

Noun/Verb Text DB

Noun/Verb Question DB

Noun Verb Tutorial

Quiz (Random of 5 Questions)

Check Answers from DB

Scratch Screen

There are three different types of block shapes; the hat blocks are the one that start the script. There are seven Hat blocks; six are in the Events category, and one in the Control category. The stack blocks perform the main commands, some stack blocks have an input area that may allow us to type or choose an item from a pull-down menu. Some blocks are Cshaped where we can insert other stack blocks and some are designed to fit in the input area of other blocks. These blocks are specially shaped slot for it to be inserted to prevent syntax errors. When we start a new Scratch project, it begins with a single cat sprite. To create new sprites, either of three options can be chosen one is draw on paint editor, next is import as a file or select from the media library that comes with scratch. Each sprite has different costumes, it can change its shape by choosing different costumes, for example to make a sprite, say penguin to talk we switch its two costume one with open mouth and other with closed mouth alternatively in a loop. That ends up with every sprite having associated block scripts. The communication among sprites and backdrop takes through broadcasts. One broadcast can trigger multiple scripts. In the script area we can add a comment to the scripts, by right clicking (Mac: Ctrl+Click) and select add comment. In online version 2.0 there is a backpack in the window that allows us to copy sprites, scripts to be copied from other scratch projects. For tutoring the language learning we have used Scratch v2.0 which is an online version, offline version is also made available from September. The layouts are altered slightly with the script area now to the right and the stage to the left. We have utilized large number of its new features required for the project. V.

Scratch version 2.0 because of large number of new features of new features like creating a block, identifying username, etc. has been utilized as needed as possible which is not available in the Scratch v1.4, Since it is browser based no longer we need to download to our computer. Only requirement is that internet connection with descent speed and the browser that flash player plugin. It is quick and powerful when compared to the previous offline version where the requirements are more to install and it may get slowdown in the older machine because of higher storage media library.

SCRATCH BASED LANGUAGE LEARNING

Before we start up with the system structure for the language learning, let us look for the requirement to run this project. As mentioned in previous section we have used

Scores Updated

Noun/Verb Audio DB

Figure 2.

Block Diagram

The block diagram in Fig. 2 represents the system structure. The whole system is divided into two phases, learning phase and assessment phase as shown in the Fig.2. When the user is logged in, the system identifies the registered user using the block “username”. In learning phase, user will learn the theory of noun and verb in both languages English and Tamil that has been fetched from the database, helps in bilingual learning. Here we have considered noun/verb exercise but it can be adopted for any language learning exercise, by changing the database alone. The database is copied to the scratch block called “list”, it can store numbers as well as strings of letters and other characters. This block works similar to an array here. Based on the index number the sentences are fetched from the database. This is made interactive with the use of sprites walking, talking. The kids and visual learners will find it more interesting. In addition, using the category “Sound” we have recorded our voice and added to sprite as sprite talking while teaching. This makes the tool more interesting and help for auditory learners.


followed by broadcast message that will trigger the scripts in other sprites and backdrop waiting for that particular broadcast message. “Switch costume” will make sprite appears differently. The block “wait” waits specified number of seconds and continues with the next block. The block “set” initialize the value to the variable “loop index”. Next C-shaped block “repeat” iterates the stack blocks inside for 17 times. The “set” block inside the “repeat” has the reporter block “loop index” and “item” that fits inside other block “set”. VI.

Figure 3.

Snapshot of rendered text from database

After the learning phase, user will be taken to the assessment phase where random of 5 questions for noun/verb is bring forth using the block “pick random” from the analogous database and the answer is analyzed and the score is updated. This Score can be utilized for rating the user's weaker area when there are more exercises added for pronouns, adjective and so forth. The assessment phase uses the category “More Block” for creating the own block to render the text on screen from the database. To render text on the screen we created a sprite “Text” using paint that contains the alphanumeric and special characters as their costumes. The screenshot of the quiz is shown in the Fig. 3.

DISCUSSION

In this paper, we have showed that language learning is one of the applications possible in scratch other than designing games. This is just an initiative for language learning. This helps people to learn English grammar through their primary Language (Tamil) and also for people who are in abroad and wish to know their native language they can learn through this. Also, though people who know English wish to teach Tamil they can learn from this. Though not in precise, but will tend to know the words in Tamil and also how Tamil sentences are constructed. In simple words, it helps in bilingual learning. If we add more exercise for other forms of grammar using the score we are able to evaluate user's weaker area and let them know. With the interactive animation it will not only attract kids, lingual learner but also helping visual and auditory learners in language learning. This will enhance the possibilities available in scratch to be known for Scratchers. This is system design can be adopted for any language and language exercise by just changing the database. REFERENCES [1] [2]

Figure 4.

Script for learning phase

The Fig. 4 is the snapshot of the script blocks. The following explanation is not the description about the script but the description of the blocks. We can see the hat block at the top followed by number of stack blocks. This hat block comes under Event category since it waits for the broadcast “classroom” to occur. Next block belongs to the family of stack block that allows user to enter number in the input area

SCRATCH WEBSITE,http://scratch.mit.edu/overview/ Lamy M.-N., Hampel R. “Online communication in language learning and teaching”, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007 [3] Stepp-Greany J. “Student perceptions on language learning in a technological environment: implications for the new millen-nium”, Language Learning & Technology 6, 1: 165-180, 2007 [Online]: http://llt.msu.edu/vol6num1/steppgreany/default.html [4] Cohen, A. Strategies in “Learning and Using a Second Language (2nd edition)”. Harlow, UK: Longman, 2011. [5] There’s no national language in India: Gujarat High Court - Times of India. Articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com, 2010-01-25. Retrieved on 2013-07-28. [6] Abstract of speakers’ strength of languages and mother tongues 2000, Census of India, 2001 [7] WEBSITE ON LEARNING DISABILITY: http://www.learningdisabilities.org.uk/help-information/aboutlearning-disabilities/impact-having-learning-disability/ [8] Ysseldyke, J., Algozzine, B., Shinn, M., & McGue, K. “Similarities and differences between low achievers and students classified as learning disabled”. The Journal of Special Education, 16, 7385, 1982. [9] Marie Carbo, Rita Dunn, and Kenneth Dunn “Teaching Students to Read Through Their Individual Learning Styles”, Prentice-Hall, 1986, p.13. [10] http://www.dyslexiavictoriaonline.com/lestavikidy.html [11] Kostelnik, M.J., Soderman, A.K., Whiren, AP. “Developmentally Appropriate Curriculum: Best Practices in Early Childhood Education”, 3rd ed. Columbus: Pearson, Merrill Prentice Hall,2004.

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