Chinese Word Games for School Children

Abstract

Mastering the Chinese language is becoming a serious problem for school children of ethnic Chinese in Singapore, where English is the working language and very often the home language as well. While it is believed that learning through play can be achieved to some extent with computer games, developing computerized word games in Chinese is not easy because of problems of input/output and the internal representation of Chinese characters. Many Chinese systems depend on additional hardware cards installed on standard PCs to increase the processing speed. Games developed on such systems will not be readily portable. To achieve portability, some features of game interaction are sacrificed. There are two components of the game system we have designed: one for teachers who prepare the word database and one for the children who play the games. Graphics and sound effects are also added to improve the appeal to small children.