Blitzmerker: Learning Idioms with a Mobile Game

In this paper, we present a mobile learning game for helping children understand idiomatic expressions. This is particularly helpful for Autistic children as they have problems understanding abstract concepts which can hinder their natural interaction. The game is also suitable for children from a foreign background who often encounter such expressions in their everyday communication and also usually misinterpret them into their verbal meaning. The game has the option of learning either the English or the German Idioms and can be easily extended to include other languages. The game was created for Android phones and tablets and evaluated with 12 autistic children. Participants indicated that they enjoyed playing the game and that it helped them learn many idioms.