Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect IERI Procedia 4 (2013 ) 8 16 2013 International Conference on Electronic Engineering and Computer Science Development of Android Application for Language Studies Christopher Dong a, Xing Liu a * a Kwantlen Polytechnic University, 12666-72nd Avenue, Surrey, BC V3W 2M8, CANADA Abstract Mobile devices are becoming very popular nowadays. Language textbooks with learning aids on mobile devices can greatly help students with their studies. The authors have been developing learning aids on mobile devices that can be used in language courses. This paper introduces an Android application that can help students to memorize vocabulary. The vocabulary is based on a published textbook. Students who are using the textbook in their courses can review the vocabulary of the textbook using the virtual flashcards and multiple choice quizzes provided by the application which runs on an Android device. 2013 013 The Christoph Authors. her Published Dong, by Xin Elsevier ng Liu.Publish B.V. Open hed access by Elsevie under CC er BY-NC-ND B.V. license. Selection ection and and peer pee review r review under unde responsibility er responsibilit of Information ty of Informat Engineering tion Engineer Research Institute ing Research Institute Keywords:Android; Language studies; Learning aids; Mobile applications; Software development 1. Introduction Learning aids are essential tools for language courses because they help the students to develop language skills. In the Mandarin courses offered by the authors institution, instructors conduct numerous learning activities and use different tools. For example, students are given crossword puzzles where they can read the clues and then fill in the blanks with the appropriate vocabulary thatt has been taught. In another activity, students are asked to identify the missing words in a dialogue. These tools and activities are interactive and fun ways that help students to memorize new words effectively. Many learning tools are already available on the Internet. For instance, YellowBridge [1] provides flashcards based on vocabulary from textbooks. Online flashcards work like real-world cardboard flashcards * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-604-599-3039; fax: +1-604-599-3242. E-mail address: xing.liu@kwantlen.ca 2212-6678 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and peer review under responsibility of Information Engineering Research Institute doi:10.1016/j.ieri.2013.11.003
Christopher Dong and Xing Liu / IERI Procedia 4 ( 2013 ) 8 16 9 where each card has a prompt side and an answer side. Everyone can access online flashcards. The advantages of online flashcards are instant dictionary reference, interactive pronunciation and session statistics. Session statistics give a summary of how many attempts a user takes to get a correct answer. In addition, the session statistics page allows the users to save the words they got wrong or they were unsure, so that they can review those words at a later time. YellowBridge offers great tools for students to review their vocabulary, but its tools are not for portable mobile devices. As a result, students cannot carry the online flashcards or memory game wherever they go. Study tools can be found in mobile applications. For instance, Mandarin Comprehension created by Golden Quartz [2] is a fun and free interactive application for anyone who wants to test their Mandarin skills through listening to audio clips and answer questions based on the terms spoken. IndieQ [3] has also produced a Mandarin vocabulary application for the Android platform. This application is a mobile e-learning quiz program where users have to name the pictures on the flashcards in Mandarin. There are already many free mobile application based study tools available. However, study tools specifically work with textbooks can be useful for language courses. Students are more likely to focus on the vocabulary from their textbooks, so it is preferable for study tools to be based on the content of a textbook. This paper introduces an Android application designed for students who are learning Mandarin using a textbook titled Integrated Chinese [4]. This application uses flashcards and multiple choice questions to help students learn the vocabulary of the textbook. The application is fun and interactive and provides an interesting way to learn Mandarin. 2. Application GUI Design The graphical user interface of the application was designed using a markup language called extensible markup language (XML). There are six interfaces in this application. The interfaces are designed in such a way that they can work with phones that have small, normal and large screens. The main interface consists of two buttons called Flashcards and Multiple Choice Quiz. The two buttons lead the users to a secondary menu interface where they can select items from a dropdown list before the application can generate the flashcards or multiple choice questions. When the Flashcards button is clicked, a menu interface appears which requests the user to select a lesson numbered 1 to 10 from a dropdown list called a spinner. There is another spinner for the user to select the type of words to appear on the front of a flashcard. The options from this spinner are Chinese character, Pinyin or Translation. The flashcard interface has three text views at the centre of the screen. These text views are used to display the Chinese character, Pinyin and English word. Two buttons let the users navigate to the previous view and the next view. The user clicks these buttons to move through the deck of flashcards. The Show/Hide button is used to reveal the front or the back side of the flashcard. When the Multiple Choice Quiz button is selected from the main interface, a menu appears which requests the user to enter three inputs. Similar to the Flashcards interface, the user is required to select a lesson, but this menu also requires the user to select two items from dropdown lists. The first item determines the words to be used in the multiple choice quiz, and the second item determines the words displayed on four answer buttons, one of which shows the correct answer. The Multiple Choice Quiz interface contains a text view, which reveals a question word. The user has to select an answer among the four answer buttons. For example, if the application reveals a Chinese character, the user has to select the corresponding Pinyin of the Chinese character in order to score a point. 2.1.Use Case Diagram
10 Christopher Dong and Xing Liu / IERI Procedia 4 ( 2013 ) 8 16 The use case diagram (Figure 1) indicates the relationships between the use cases and the actor. The actor is a student who wants to review vocabulary. The actor has two ways to review vocabulary. A student can review the vocabulary either using flashcards or a multiple choice quiz. Fig. 1. Use case diagram 2.2 Flow Chart The flow chart (Figure 2) shows that users are required to enter two requirements which are lesson and question type before the application can generate the flashcards. The application retrieves the lists of vocabulary and displays a question on the front side of the card. Users can navigate through the deck of cards, and if users want the answer, they can flip the card by press the Show button. Fig. 2. Flow chart for Flashcards
Christopher Dong and Xing Liu / IERI Procedia 4 ( 2013 ) 8 16 11 The flow charts for Flashcards and Multiple Choice Quiz look similar, but unlike the Flashcards, Multiple Choice Quiz (Figure 3) requires an additional input, which is the answer type. The application then checks if the inputs are valid before the application retrieves the lists of vocabulary the same way as Flashcards. Multiple Choice Quiz then displays a question along with four choices. When the user selects one of the answer choices, the application lets the user know if the choice is correct or not. Fig. 3. Flow chart for Multiple Choice Quiz 3. Implementation The application was implemented using the Eclipse IDE. Eclipse is a free open source software. This software is compatible with Windows and Mac operating systems. Eclipse is installed along with the Android Development Tools (ADT). ADT is a plug-in for the Eclipse that gives developers the integrated environment to build Android applications. ADT is free to download, and it provides the necessary tools to develop Android applications for all platforms. According to the data collected during a 14-day period ending on January 3, 2013, Android 2.3 is still active on 47.4% of devices that have accessed Google Play [5]. Therefore applications should be developed using Android 2.3 or lower. The application of this paper is developed using Android 2.2, so it is compatible with most of Android phones. The application is built using the Java programming language. The application interface is built using XML. The application is then tested on a virtual machine which emulates an Android phone. The application reads data from arrays in a Java file. Before arrays are created the data are organized using Microsoft Excel or Open Office Calc. The data are vocabulary from a Mandarin textbook. There are 10 lessons and each lesson contains around 40 Chinese words. Each word has Chinese characters, their Pinyins and translations. Therefore, there are 1293 data entries in the application. Microsoft Excel keeps the data organized because vocabulary data are entered in three columns. They are the columns for Chinese characters, Pinyin and translation. Once the three columns are created, columns of quotations and commas are inserted
12 Christopher Dong and Xing Liu / IERI Procedia 4 ( 2013 ) 8 16 between the threee columns. Figure 4 shows the columns in Open Office Calc. The columns are then merged into one column creating a list of words with quotation with the words separated by commas. The list is then copied and pasted to the Java file. Figure 5 shows the arrays of words of lesson 1. Figure 4. Arrays of words, Pinyin, English translation Fig. 5. Arrays of vocabulary from Lesson 1
Christopher Dong and Xing Liu / IERI Procedia 4 ( 2013 ) 8 16 13 4. Test Results When the application software starts running, it loads the main interface. The user has two options on the main interface which are Flashcards or Multiple Choice Quiz. If Flashcards is chosen, the application loads a menu for flashcards, which requires the user to select a lesson and a question type. Figure 6 shows that the user selected lesson 1 and the Chinese question type. When the Start button is pressed, the application retrieves the character, Pinyin and English arrays for lesson 1, and then the application shuffless the arrays. Since the user selected the Chinese question type, Chinese characters are printed on the front side of the card as shown on Figure 7. On Figure 8 the user presses the Show button, which flips the card and reveals the answer. In other words, English and Pinyin words are displayed below the question word. Fig. 6. Flashcards Menu Fig. 7. Front side of Flashcards Fig. 8. Back side of Flashcards Fig. 9. The Multiple Choice Menu If Multiple Choice Quiz is chosen, the application loads the MC Menu class, and the user selects three
14 Christopher Dong and Xing Liu / IERI Procedia 4 ( 2013 ) 8 16 items using the dropdown lists. Before the application can make multiple choice questions, it requires the user to select a lesson, the type of questions and the type of answers. For this test example, the user selected lesson 2, Chinese character questionss and English answers. When the Start button is pressed, the application first checks to see if the question type and the answer type are the same before sending the inputs to the database class. The database class retrieves data by looking for the lesson number. Figure 9 shows that lesson number 2 is selected and within this lesson, there are three arrays called character, Pinyin and English. Since the user selected the character question, the application copies the character array to the question array and copies the English array to the answer array. The quiz begins once user pressed the Start button. The application displays the lesson number on the top of the quiz interface. Below the lesson number is a word which the user has to match with its translation. The application selectss four words from the English array and displays the words on the four buttons. Only one of the buttons is the correct translation. If the user selected the correct translation, a message appears, informing the user that he or she has selected the correct answer (Figure 10). Otherwise, a dialogue box appears showing the user the correct translation (Figure 11). The application adds a point to score whenever the user selects the correct answer. The application also shows the amount of questions remained unanswered. Fig. 10. Correct Choice Fig.11. Show answer in dialogue box
Christopher Dong and Xing Liu / IERI Procedia 4 ( 2013 ) 8 16 15 Fig.12. Menu button gives you quick access to main menu and result Fig. 13. Result page page When the number of remaining questions reaches zero, the application sends the user to the result page. The user can access the result page through the menu option without completing the remaining questions (Figure 12). This makes the application more convenient, since most lessons contain over 40 words, and the user may not want to review alll the words. The results page (Figure 13) shows the user's score in percentage, which is the amount of correct answers divided by the amount of answered questions. Below the score is the list of words that the user correctly answered. Right below the correctly answered words is another list that displays the incorrectly answered words and unanswered words. 5. Development and Test Runs The application was first developed to generate multiple choice questions from a lesson. The test runs show the application can randomize the list of words properly and keep track of user's correct and incorrect answers. Next, the application is developed with a menu page, so users can select a different lesson of vocabulary and the type of words they want to be tested on. The test results indicate that application can retrieve the correct list of vocabulary and display question words and choices properly according the user inputs. Later test runs are focused on the appearances of the application. The buttons are adjusted to reduce font size if the word length reaches a certain size. This way it can prevent buttons from doubling its height to show words containing 25 more letters. 6. Conclusion The authors have developedd a portable learning tool for students who are studying Mandarin. This learning tool contains 431 words from a textbook that students are using at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. This application works only on Android operating system; therefore, the authors plan on making this application available for other mobile operating systems. The authors also plan on adding audios, so students can practice pronunciation while reviewing vocabulary.
16 Christopher Dong and Xing Liu / IERI Procedia 4 ( 2013 ) 8 16 Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Mr. Wayne Tebb, Deanof the School of Business, and other staff in the Dean s office, Kwantlen Polytechnic University,for their support. References [1] Chinese Flashcards, YellowBridge, Apr 2011. [Online]. Available: http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/flashcards.php [Accessed: 14 Jan. 2012]. [2] Golden Quartz, Chinese Listening Quiz, Google Play, Feb 2012. [Online]. Available: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.quipack.a.b4ed6129813f8d5000100628e [Accessed: 18 Jan. 2012]. [3] IndieQ, Chinese Vocabulary, Google Play, Dec 2011. [Online]. Available: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.quipack.a.b4e97fceafde72e000100a444 [Accessed: 20 Jan. 2012]. [4] Y. Liu et al. Level 1 Part 1 Integrated Chinese Textbook Simplified Characters, 3rd ed. Boston, MA: Cheng &Tsui Company Inc, 2010. [5] Platform Versions, Android Developer, Oct. 2012. [Online]. Available: http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html [Accessed: 15 Jan. 2013].