据美国卡耐基梅隆大学（Carnegie Mellon University，简称CMU）调查发现，手机游戏有助于儿童识字，这一点对偏远地区的幼儿教育尤其有效。

该校在比较落后的中国河南省新安县展开调查，发现有两款手机游戏对提高儿童汉字识别能力特别有帮助，而在北京地区的深入调查也显示了同样的结果。

Mobile Games Teach Chinese Children To Read

这项调查由该校的手机及扫盲研究项目组发起，计算机科学人机交互研究所副教授和项目主管Matthew Kam表示，“我们认为游戏中的互动式学习过程有助于提高识字能力……研究结果表明这类游戏的进一步开发，有助于价格便宜的手机成为落后、偏远地区儿童的重要学习工具。”

汉语是世界上最多人使用的语言，说普通话者超过10亿人，但汉语和字母文字不一样的地方在于，它每个汉字各代表一个音节或词语，或者兼具两者的功能。而且汉字的形状与其本身发音没有多大联系，不同方言对同一个汉字的发音也是天南海北各不相同。

研究人员分析了中国儿童玩过的25款传统游戏，提炼出协作互动、儿歌、手工游戏玩具等元素，设计了两种教育性质的手机游戏。

第一种手机游戏是一个多媒体世界，孩子们可以根据发音、笔画、图片或者视频提示，写出正确的汉字。第二种类似于击鼓传花，孩子们根据游戏中击鼓声的节拍，在手机上写下指定汉字的一个笔画，然后再将手机传给下者写完另一笔，直到游戏结束为止。

Kam和其他CMU研究人员目前正与中国计算机科学家一道合作，挖掘手机游戏作为科教工具的潜力。

不过，这并不是手机游戏成为儿童教材的首个案例，类似的项目已在印度展开，CMU研究小组还打算去肯尼亚做同样的试验。

Kam表示，如果手机游戏可以提供教育用途，这将会极大地刺激不发达地区的手机网络和手机用途的同步发展。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译）

Mobile Games Teach Chinese Children To Read

Mobile phone games could provide a way for Chinese children to learn how to read, especially in rural areas.

Research at Carnegie Mellon University found that two of the games showed promise with children in Xin’an, an underdeveloped region in Henan province. Further studies in Beijing also showed that kids who played the games increased their knowledge of Chinese Characters.

Carnegie Mellon University researchers are testing mobile phone games as a method of teaching Chinese children to read in rural areas.

ChinaIndiaKenyaThe studies were run by the university’s Mobile & Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies Project.

“We believe that the cooperative learning encouraged by the games contributed to character learning,” said CMU’s Matthew Kam, assistant professor in the School of Computer Science’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute and project director, in a statement. “The results of our studies suggest that further development of these games could make inexpensive mobile phones important learning tools, particularly for children in underdeveloped rural areas.”

Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world, with more than 1 billion Mandarin speakers. Unlike languages that use alphabets, Chinese has characters that each represents a syllable or word, and often both. About 6,000 characters are commonly used, but the shape of each character provides few clues to its pronunciation and different dialects pronounce the same character differently.

The researchers analyzed 25 traditional games played by children in China to identify elements, such as cooperation, songs and handmade game objects that could be used to design two educational mobile phone games.

In one, Multimedia Word, children have to recognize and write a correct Chinese character based on pronunciation hints, a sketch, photo or video. In a second game, Drumming Stroke, children pass the mobile phone one by one on the rhythm of a drum sound played by the mobile phone, with each player required to write one stroke of a given Chinese character by following the exact stroke order.

Kam and other CMU researchers are collaborating with Chinese computer scientists to further explore the mobile gaming’s potential as an educational tool.

This isn’t the first time mobile games have been used as an educational strategy. A similar project was initiated in India, and the CMU team is also looking at starting one in Kenya.

Kam says if the mobile games work as learning tools, it could spur the development of both mobile phone networks and greater usage in many underdeveloped areas.（source:ibtimes）