So, you want to make a language learning game?

Monolingualism is a prevalent myth embedded in American culture, an ideology promoted by the ignorant, often for political gain. The reality is that, "almost everyone has experienced the learning of a language or languages in addition to their first or native language" (Kelly Hall, 2019). Unsurprisingly then, since almost all humanity somehow has dealt with learning another language, there exist entire fields and subfields of linguistics devoted to Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL). Unfortunately, there still exists a real disconnect between the research, theories, and frameworks and the tools, apps, and games made to help assist with what is ultimately the shared, common goal of linguists and developers alike: improving a human being's repertoire of communicative competence in an L2+.

While game developers are experts in making games functional, fun, and available to the masses, it is unlikely that their specific skill sets also include deep understanding of and real-life experience with SLA and CALL. Cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociocultural learning theory, systemic-functional linguistics, and complexity theory are all research-backed theoretical perspectives in SLA which would be useful for both CALL and game developers (Chapelle, 2009). In fact, the functional difference between CALL developers and game-based language learning (GBLL) developers is probably minimal. Why should the CALL apps, products, tools, and materials be boring and stuffy? And if they become ludified, what then differentiates them from a bonafide game?

An example from CALL research that would be useful for game developers wanting to know how their game can improve language learning is a study by Payne and Whitney (2002) in which they found that students who replaced half the oral conversation with written chat performed better than those who did not. This study suggests that a space for human computer communication can be exploited by CALL developers, and by extension, GBLL developers as well.

A frustrating problem arises when the game developers fail to notice and engage with the research community that has already been obsessively posing the same question for almost a century: How do humans best learn language? Game developers needn't remake the ever-present, ever-revolving wheel of theoretical research; it already exists! We just need to collaborate better!

Sadly, many attempts to involve linguistics experts in GBLL are either token (at best) or baseless (at worst). For example, the widely marketed, publicly known GBLL platform Duolingo does not use High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT), which involves exposure to multiple native speaker voices repeating the target phrase, even though this method has been repeatedly shown to be the best way to learn L2 sounds. In fact, Applied Linguistics, one of the most respected journals in the field, will not currently accept new research articles on the topic of HVPT, considering it given knowledge. Duolingo instead uses a single native speaker to pronounce words and phrases, even though this is not research-based practice. Additionally, these are presented in a series of context-less sentences in an arbitrary sequence order that is not language-specific, despite the fact that order of acquisition of grammatical features is a complex, well-studied topic that has been shown to be both dependent on features of the language as well as features of the learners themselves.

The frameworks for learning language already exist, are well studied and researched, and are actually not always intuitive. Far too often the programmers, UX developers, and marketing experts wrongly assume that their own experience with language learning qualifies them as experts in SLA and CALL. Because of the great amount of humility it would take for developers to rely on linguists, perhaps the only real hope of revolution and progress in the field of GBLL will come when linguists themselves become developers. Learning Python seems like a more realistic goal for language experts than convincing a team of proud, intelligent tech experts to listen to us; after all, most of us are really good at talking about communication precisely because we so often find it elusive.





Chapelle, C. (2009). The relationship between second language acquisition theory and computer-assisted language learning. Modern Language Journal, 93(1), 741-753.

Kelly Hall, J. (2019). Essentials of SLA for L2 Teachers: A Transdisciplinary Framework. Routledge.

Payne, J. & Whitney, P. (2002). Developing L2 oral proficiency through synchronous CMC: output, working memory, and interlanguage development. CALICO Journal, 20 (1), 7-32.

Č1 ČELENDŽ

Well! It's been an eternity since I've posted here!

Some really major things related to my acquisition of Czech have transpired in the meantime, namely:

- I have finally found a treatment that is working for my debilitating anxiety!
- I started graduate school at ISU as an MA student in TESL/ALT.
- I LOVE GRAD SCHOOL!
- I started collecting a corpus of my learner language
- I started skyping with Czechs again, not really daily, but about 2-3x/week since about the beginning of February.
- I started collaborating with this awesome male version of me named Gavin. He's fantastic! It's a huuuuuuge deal to be able to share my Czech learning with another learner!
- We had our first Skype session today with my best friend Tom. It was really successful, in my opinion. The video we created is awful (laggy, frozen image...) and I can't figure out why. Maybe my connection was bad. We may have to move platforms. I'll try testing this more tomorrow.
- oh yeah, and there's this horribly scary GLOBAL PANDEMIC forcing everybody to stay home right now! I've never been this busy in my entire life, conjuring up things for my children to do that are at least marginally useful. They are really obsessed with block coding. I don't know if that's actually going to be effective at teaching them real code, but... Well...

Renewed competitive energy is really exciting and happy for me. I'm in a good place mentally and emotionally when it comes to Czech learning. I'm gonna do it!

A3.5.1 thoughts

hahahaha! I am really such a poor planner :-)

My master plan for Czech A3.5? Well, it turns out that I need exactly twice as much time to get it done as I had originally planned. Isn't that...funny!?

It's going really well. I love this textbook, Česky, prosím II. There are a lot of really great things about it.

Two biggest criticisms: It claims to be the equivalent of Czech 102. It's more like Czech 301 (for a native English speaker). For it to be a good book, you'd need about ~3 months each for:

Czech 101
Czech 102
Czech 201
Czech 202
Czech 301 <-- it's about here in terms of difficulty and time/experience you'd need in order for this book to be effective.

The author struggles to make relevant assessments. But hey, language assessments are one of the more difficult components of language learning. It's also an enormous part of the master's program I'll be starting in January, fingers crossed. I really want to study computer assisted language learning and corpus linguistics.

This guy says to cut your goals in half - or if that's not possible, to double the time.

So yeah. I'm doubling the time. It will take me about 2 weeks to get through each chapter. Except I really would like to finish this before I start my master's program, so I am going to secretly (eh... not so secretly) try to hurry it along.

Sprinting! Yay!

A3.5.1 přemýšlení

First, here are some vids:

Now, to the musings.

I am pleasantly surprised to find out that I really, really like the textbook "Česky, prosím II: učebnice češtiny pro cizence" by Jitka Cvejnová from 2012.

The biggest complaint is that it's not second year or second semester Czech for English as an L1 student. It's more like third year.

Because Czech is really, really hard.

But, once you've gotten some words in your head and have a pretty good, broad, wide overview of grammar, this book is a good tool! It hits the exact right sweet spot for me personally. I catch my errors, but it's not dead boring.

It uses a communicative approach and uses relevant texts and dialogues. For example, the first chapter is all about vocab that a Czech as a second language student might want to know. They were at times painfully honest about why people tend to learn Czech: it's a cheap country to study in. But they even include the weird fringe category of Americans who want to learn Czech for cultural reasons, like me.

The exercises are straightforward, the grammar is explained in an intuitive way so far, and there are multiple modalities. The textbook is great for working alone - and would probably be good in a classroom. The CD has multiple voices. I really like the pracovní sešit as a tool for using when skyping with people. I will have to find a way to get this book into their hands somehow. It is great practice for me personally.

It has just been sooooooo long since I have found any kind of useful Czech textbook that I find this incredibly refreshing and surprising.

I am not sure why my goals always have to be so darn ambitious, but that is just how I am. Right now I am on basically track to finish this week's goal, but it's possible I may not be able to keep this pace for the next 10 chapters. If so, that is fine and it's just how it will have to be.

It feels great to study Czech again. It is really fun and I've missed it.

A3.5 Proč se učím česky?

Vítám vás, češtino A3.5!

Today has been a wonderful day so far.

My kids went back to school! I suddenly have some time to myself! Alone! Without interruptions!

Hallelujah!

Guess what. Surprise, surprise, I did not accomplish my goal of finishing Czech A4 this summer. Almost immediately after I wrote the last post, I received a much more involved church calling, which basically meant there was no more time for Czech this summer.

But it's not summer anymore, and the first thing I did, after relaxing for a while and basically doing nothing, was...

...to work a little bit on edits for a book I am writing...

...but the next thing on my list was to create a plan for Czech A3.5.

I'm just really stubborn and I don't want to give up the idea of the plan that I created for A4, but I really want to do some things differently so, why not just call it something else, leave A4 alone for now (I can always go back to it later), and do something else?

Okay so here's the plan:

I have this ridiculous učebnice a pracovní sešit called "Česky, prosím II." It is as good as any other thing. I plan to work my way through the books for the next 10 weeks. If I stay on track, I will finish around the time of my birthday, which seems like a good point at which to decide to continue or do something different. There are 10 lekce in this curriculum, it includes some audio, and it is pretty straightforward (if a bit dull). I worked my way through several exercises just now. It's not too hard, but I did still make a few errors. 

Each week I will continue to gather my nová slova. 

I also really want to watch the cheesy TV show Arabela. I watched the first episode today. It was great! It made me laugh. Jotted down some new words. There are 13 episodes, so that means about 1-2 per week. Or more, if I want.

I also want to do some reading, since I read some academic articles recently about L2 acquisition and input. I didn't plan out the reading - it will be "free."

And of course, of course, the most important component on many levels (motivation-wise, learning-wise, interestingness-wise), is videochatting with willing collaborators. I will continue to do that, as well. 

It's basically like a less intensely planned version of A4, with smaller goals. They are about halved, so that seems about perfect. I am confident I will be able to do this.

Hooray!

A4.8.9 meta: o pokroku

I gave myself a deadline of today to decide whether or not I'd continue with my Czech A4 learning schedule as planned. It's not so much a schedule (there are not really deadlines) as a big spreadsheet with lots of check boxes.

<ranty tangent about programming>

In other news, a while ago now I discovered conditional formatting in google sheets. I suppose it was only a matter of time until I discovered the IF and IFS functions and started writing nonsense strings of characters in my spreadsheets. It's so useful. I am probably reluctantly clinging to my ignorant non-programmer ways only because I know exactly how hard and painful the learning curve is gonna be. It is not going to be fun at all. Things like { } and ~ and | and < > and / \ can just stay away from me for a little while yet, but I am sure that someday, I'm going to cave in under this mighty pressure of, "auuuugh I wish I knew how to do x." And, you know, five years from then, after I've learned at least two programming languages (Danny says you have to learn multiple ones before you can really start to see the patterns in what applies to the language and what is universal to programming), watch out world.

But for the moment, I have other pursuits and projects and my self-confidence is still very fragile. I recently decided to wean my baby, which was definitely the right choice for my mental health. I've felt so much better since then - dramatically better. But it's not like lactation immediately ceases, so... I should be careful not to take on too many new projects too quickly.

Besides that, like I said, I know that learning how to write code is going to be difficult to me. I've had a few false starts on that trail (though I did get an A in that Java class in college - but it's allllllll forgotten, except things like sitting in the computer lab next to Nate, or the joy of seeing the stupid GUI work for the first time, or feeling very self conscious about being the only woman in my class..).

It's abstract. It's not intuitive. It is very logical, and I know that I struggle with organizing my thoughts that way. It takes me time and a lot of effort. My 8 year old son, of his own ambition, decided to learn python through Khan Academy. I'm still at the point where I can help him when he gets so frustrated he can't work his way through the tutorials ("Hmm. I think you need to call the variable inside the function. Try putting it there [points] instead." "Mom! You're the best!") but that is not going to last very long, and I know it.

</tangent>

I've been reading some very interesting academic articles about Second Language Acquisition. There's this big theory out there called the "input hypothesis" which basically is that SLA depends on the input being just a teeeeeeny tiny bit beyond your capacity. I have vague memories about learning about this in college, too. It's logical. There is also a lot of support of read-read-read-read-read-read-read-read-read for SLA. Just, read everything you can. That is not the current plan. The next version of my plan is going to look a lot different.

I had been feeling really frustrated because the second that my emotional limitations felt like they were lifted from me, I found myself surrounded by some very real physical limitations. I have five children, it's summer, my mom was not around to watch them at all - my days have been completely consumed in childcare and housework. I don't hate it, and at the same time, I'm looking forward to September when school starts again.

I did what I could to try to work my way through my really ridiculous spreadsheet. I started with the tasks that were the easiest to do alone. Part of the problem is that even though emotionally I feel so much better, it's still really difficult to communicate with my Czech collaborators (almost all of whom I haven't spoken to in weeks). But this week, I finally managed to drop some of them a line and vaguely explain where I've been, ascribing it to a serious health problem. Mental health is still health, even though it feels so... much... not. Ughh.

Whatever kind of collaboration is in store for me this summer, it's almost certainly mostly going to be asynchronous. I mean, it's going to have to be (see point about having five children).

In the end, I decided that I'm not going to give up this plan, in spite of its flaws. I already modified it to be much, much fewer words/"unit". I just want to work my way through it. Maybe that's just because of pride, but I don't really care; I want to finish something I start, especially when it's something like this. When this is over, I will move on to A5, which I think is going to be a lot simpler in design, and involve a lot more reading and watching films or TV shows (which are shorter, which is an advantage).

If I could program, I would write a program that would automate finding the frequency of words in SkELL. I don't even care what kind of output it would be. Copy and pasting 120 values from a single table into a spreadsheet would be a cinch compared to looking up 120 different words and doing it one at a time.