01// Here we are
Project Partners: Maria Shuttleworth and Kate Chernysheva
Fig 1. The Dream Team Credit: Maria Shuttleworth
So here we are. Reaching the end of my MA:UX journey, yet just initiating the beginning of a new and long one: the Final Major Project.
Maria Shuttleworth, Kate Chernysheva and I previously had a successful collaboration on the Paper Plan project, and were very much willing to work together again.
But we were faced with a challenge: finding a topic that interests the three of us.
After going back and forth with potential ideas, Maria came to us with an intriguing topic: language learning and context. To me, this ultimately made a lot of sense. I’ve always prided myself for being fluent in three language (English, French and Arabic), which motivated me to currently learn my fourth (Spanish). Language-learning app Duolingo was my basis for this process, along with occasional Spanish lessons. However in both methods, the lack of contextual awareness and negligence of my personal learning objectives discouraged me to continue. I wished there was a more efficient and motivating way to keep this up. Needless to say, I was gladly onboard with this direction.
Each of us developed a different drive to the project, due to our divergent language learning journeys. Kate is a fluent Russian speaker, and was challenged to learn English once she moved to the UK as a teenager. Maria on the other hand speaks multiple languages, and majored in Linguistics. As for me, Lebanon’s colonial history has made trilingualism a common quality for most of its current citizens. I attended a French school, where we were taught English and Arabic from a very young age. Thus, my learning process was very natural. I find myself unintentionally mixing the three languages in one sentence.
While our journeys were different, our concern was the same: the current language learning methods lacked context and authenticity. Hence, we envision to design an alternative language learning system, offering a motivating method integrated in our daily experiences.
Now came the time to make a few decisions: what? for who? where? why? and how?
Project Aims
Experiment with new learning mechanisms
Creating an improved contextualised learning experience integrated in our daily lives.
Develop a critical understanding of current language learning techniques
Exploring the convergence of typography and imagery for faster learning.
Collaborating with the aim to combine different skills for a common and shared interest.
Fig 1. Division of our tasks and interests Credit: Everyone.
Who is it for?
This project would mainly target people who find language learning as a need, rather than an optional activity. Given that adult language learners tend to find acquiring language fluency more difficult than children exposed from a younger age (Hu, 2016), we decided to challenge ourselves and target this category of people. We do not have a specific age range in mind, but we envision it to be for expat workers or students wishing to acquire a higher level of efficiency in the language of the country they moved to.
We hope to offer an alternative learning method that would ideally be both motivating and integrated in our daily experiences as much as possible.
Where does it live?
I found that current methods of language-learning lack context and ways to relate to people’s needs in certain situations. As motivation and attitude is key to learn a second language (Oroujlou et al., 2011), it is important to preserve it in the learning process.
We are still uncertain about which of the four language skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) we want to focus on, but I would be interested to explore their intersections for potential design possibilities.
Evaluation
Given that we know a total of eight languages in our group and are in contact with enough people who speak them fluently, I believe a possible way to evaluate our project would be to try and test it with a selected set of languages and different people. This method would not only allow us to track the progress of our design, but would also ensure its flexibility across different scripts and languages.
References
Connolly, T.M., Stansfield, M. and Hainey, T. (2011). An alternate reality game for language learning: ARGuing for multilingual motivation. Computers & Education, 57(1), pp.1389–1415.
Hu, R. (2016). The Age Factor in Second Language Learning. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 6(11), p.2164.
Oroujlou, N. and Vahedi, M. (2011). Motivation, attitude, and language learning. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 29, pp.994–1000.
Ortega, G., Özyürek, A. and Peeters, D. (2020). Iconic gestures serve as manual cognates in hearing second language learners of a sign language: An ERP study. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 46(3), pp.403–415.
Schwienhorst, K. (1998). The “third place” – virtual reality applications for second language learning. ReCALL, 10(1), pp.118–126.