Design team members: Janice Choi, Wendy Lo
Supervisors: Professor Jonathan Histon
Background
This project focuses on second language acquisition (SLA), which is the process where individuals learn a language other than their native language. Many adults who are interested in learning a foreign language, especially in a country where the language is not spoken, are exposed to much less language input which causes them difficulty in learning. There is already a large offering of language resource applications on mobile devices such as translators, phrasebooks and language lessons. New technologies in the mobile field are beginning to emerge as well, such as Google Goggles, which allows the user to search the web by taking photos of text or objects. However, there is an area of opportunity for mobile language learning where social methods and emerging technology are combined to form new, engaging learning methods. This project will analyze the areas of weakness of current mobile application solutions available in the market, and develop a new solution with the technology for machine assisted language learning to enhance the language learning experience.
Project description
The objective of this project is to provide an innovative, engaging solution that takes advantage of the accessibility of a mobile application to provide the user with exposure of the language at their convenience in a way that suits their learning style and pace of learning. A social aspect will be incorporated into the solution to provide users the opportunity to connect with others with the same language goals. The application will allow the user to personalize the content to allow users to learn at their own speed and select content of interest to them.
Design methodology
The development of the mobile application will be on the Android platform. The process of developing an innovative mobile application that meets the users’ needs includes the following phases:
- Gather customer needs via interviewing current language learning individuals and online survey
- Emerging mobile technology research
- Concept generation, analysis and selection
- Development and testing