Adapting arcade games for learning.

Although memory exercises and arcade-style games are alike in their repetitive nature, memorization tasks like vocabulary drills tend to be mundane and tedious while arcade-style games are popular, intense and broadly addictive. This suggests an opportunity to modify well-known, existing arcade games for the purpose of memorization and learning. A key challenge to modifying any existing arcade-style game is the incorporation of learning on top of an already fast-paced, mentally demanding game. This paper presents a web-based vocabulary-drill game, based on Tetris and augmented with speech recognition (Figure 1). To help adult learners acquire new vocabulary, we embed an in-game mechanism that presents vocabulary items to be learned via word-picture associations. Using our working speech recognition prototype, we investigate the extent to which retrieval practice, an educationally effective but cognitively demanding strategy, impacts learning and engagement in this fast-paced game environment.