Innovation in Language Learning

Children like Role Playing Games (RPG). When they enjoy communicating with characters on the Game in English activity class, they are not aware of taking diagnostic tests in English. This paper introduces how well the active learning software contributes to nurture children’s literacy. The RPG active learning software on Microsoft PowerPoints and the system between iPods and the system server on the intranet have already been developed under this research project. The RPG active learning game diagnostic tests have been carried out on the second graders and the fifth graders of an elementary school in Kobe, Japan. Children also answer five inquiries of the learners’ attitude in class. They answer each question out of 4 multiple choices. They evaluated their own attitudes on the four alternatives. Two of them are affirmative and others are negative.

The survey shows that the 95% of the fifth graders and the 86% of second graders affirmatively answer the question, “Did you enjoy the story？”. It shows they understand well the story contents on this software.  The 95% of fifth graders and the 92% of second graders enjoy shopping and they affirmatively answer the question “Did you enjoy shopping？”. The data shows they don’t only feel their shopping successful, but also they actually enjoy shopping on the RPG world. When a question, “How well did you buy for Newton?” is asked to the fifth graders and the second graders, the 95% of the fifth and the 82% of the second graders affirmatively response. When the main character, “Newton,” checks out what he wanted at the end of the game, the children see their own results and know whether the goods they have clicked are correct or not. Moreover, a descriptive questionnaire we took at the same time, “I could not choose some correct answers, but the game was a lot of fun” shows they actively positively evaluate the content of this game.

The fifth graders have experienced 12 school-hour English lessons before the test. On the other hand, the second graders have only 2 or 3 school-hour English lessons before the test. You could see that both students enjoy the computer RPG world, and understand the content of the story well, using the iPods during taking the listening comprehension tests at the same time.　In this paper, this software has contributed the active learning for elementary school children, to evaluate their English and nurture their literacy to English words.