N.E.L.L.
I researched and co-designed an experimental game for DARPA to help children ages 6-9 prime their brains for learning a foreign language. It was called N.E.L.L., or Neuroplasticity for Early Language Learning.
The Project
Muzzy Lane Software was awarded a grant from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to research, design and create a demo for a game that could be played by children ages 6-9 that would help improve their ability to learn a foreign language in adulthood.
The Challenge
We were creating a new kind of game that didn’t teach a specific foreign language, but instead exercised and reinforced language-learning skills that young children naturally have. This game needed to hold the attention of young children while building on their natural ability to listen to and differentiate between non-native language sounds and intuit new grammatical structures.
The Solution
The demo for N.E.L.L. was done with various language sounds, spoken by native speakers, in order to reinforce the skill of listening to non-native language sounds (the children who played were native English-speakers). The players explored a fantasy environment and listened to short snippets of English, Mandarin Chinese, and Arabic whose meaning could be inferred from the environment. We chose real language in order to represent the many ways humans use sound and gesture to convey meaning, without accidentally limiting that range with our English-speaking predispositions! That said, we also included English in order to anchor the game for our expected English-native audience, and in order not to “other” the languages spoken in the game.
We began with Chinese word pairs that were not different except in their tone, so that the player would begin by hearing those differences and being asked to remember how they were different.
Words were repeated in different environments so that the players could practice listening for familiar words in context. This gave them the valuable skill of critically listening, and trying to use whatever knowledge they had in a foreign language situation, rather than giving up. This skill is essential to quickly picking up a new language.
The game was successfully completed, and tested with 5- and 9-year-olds. For the most part, the children enjoyed the game and were successful in completing the tasks. We did use the information we gained from testing to make changes to the game. We made some sections easier to complete, and improved the explanation of the mechanics overall.