SPREADSHEETS FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING
Creative Ideas for Informatics and Foreign Language Lessons
Barbara Sabitzer
Department of Informatics Systems, Klagenfurt University, Klagenfurt, Austria
Keywords: Spreadsheets, Foreign Languages, Informatics, Information and Communication Technology (ICT),
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Lessons, Computer-assisted Language Learning.
Abstract: On the one hand, spreadsheets are a very useful tool for language lessons, but unfortunately almost
unknown by language teachers, often due to missing ICT-competences. On the other hand, spreadsheets are
taught in informatics or ICT lessons, but mainly in a mathematical or an economical context; even thought,
it could also be taught in many other context, especially for languages. This paper will give some creative
ideas to benefit both subjects: Ideas for the use of spreadsheets in foreign language learning are presented,
not only for writing vocabulary lists, but also for language games and oral exercises. These tasks as well as
some ideas for interdisciplinary projects may be applied also in informatics for revising and introducing
functions of spreadsheet analysis software in informatics. Interdisciplinary learning, especially ICT-
supported language lessons are seen as more interesting and motivating than lessons related only to one
specific subject.
1 INTRODUCTION
On the one hand, spreadsheets are a very useful, but
unfortunately, almost an unknown tool for language
learning, perhaps because of missing competences of
language teachers in this software application. On
the other hand, spreadsheets are taught in infor-
matics or Information and Communication Techno-
logy (ICT) lessons, but, mainly in a mathematical or
an economical context; even though it could also be
taught in a language context.
This paper will show some possibilities for both
informatic and language lessons including interdi-
sciplinary projects as well. First, it will present some
creative ideas for the use of spreadsheets in foreign
language lessons, not only for writing vocabulary
lists, but also for language games and oral exercises.
Next, the topics of foreign languages will be
used as a basis of informatics exercises and lessons
about spreadsheets. Some ideas will be given for tea-
ching basic functions as well as complex functions
with projects for advanced learners.
2 MOTIVATION
The idea for this paper was born because of my own
experiences as an informatics and language teacher
in a vocational school as well as a lecturer at a Uni-
versity and a teacher training college offering in-
service training for language and informatics
teachers.
The use of spreadsheets for language learning
and interdisciplinary projects has many benefits not
only for language teachers but also for teachers of
informatics and computer science.
First of all there is the aspect of motivation,
which is an essential precondition of the learning
and memory process. It is confirmed by neuro-
didactics based on brain research (Sabitzer (2011a
and 2011b) that motivation is higher when
the students are interested in the learning con-
tents and/or enjoy the exercises, e.g. games or
competitions,
the learning contents and exercises relate to the
personal world of the students, so that
they recognize the purpose and benefit of the
topics, and
the learned knowledge, competences, or the crea-
ted products can be used in their real life.
(Herrman, 2009)
Interdisciplinary tasks and projects also satisfy
some principles of neurodicatics,. They may foster
creativity as well as cross-linked thinking and offer
129
Sabitzer B..
SPREADSHEETS FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING - Creative Ideas for Informatics and Foreign Language Lessons.
DOI: 10.5220/0003902601290134
In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2012), pages 129-134
ISBN: 978-989-8565-06-8
Copyright
c
2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
possiblities of revising and applying learned know-
ledge and competences. Interdisciplinary learning
may be a distinctive and proven way of learning
(Repko, 2008). As mentioned in Sabitzer (2011b)
referring to different studies, “interdisciplinary tasks
and projects as well as ICT-supported language les-
sons are seen as more interesting and more moti-
vating than lessons related only to one specific
subject”.
A good reason for the use of spreadsheets, as
exercise books or vocabulary lists, is the principle
“write once use many”, derived from “Write Once
Read Many” or WORM, a data storage device, well
known by informatics teachers. Based on simple
vocabulary lists, many exercises and games can be
created, for practicing written as well as spoken lan-
guage. Furthermore, the spreadsheets can be used as
a basis for mobile learning via smartphones or tablet
PCs, a way of leaning that may be very attractive for
our students.
3 SPREADSHEETS IN PRACTICE
The proposals in this chapter are directed to foreign
language teachers as well as to informatics teachers.
I also want to encourage language teachers who feel
that they may not have enough computer skills. They
can ask the students to do the exercises on their own
or they can take them as an impetus for the
cooperation with informatics teachers who are often
pleased to get new ideas for their lessons.
All the exercises and tasks presented in this pa-
per were developed and accomplished in my own
classes, some of them during the language and/or in-
formatics lessons. Other tasks, like the writing of vo-
cabulary lists, were done by the students at home.
I also encourage teachers to make the students
create their own learning material. Based on my
experience and the feedback of my pupils, I know
that they like being active and creating learning pro-
ducts like playing cards, crosswords or games. That
is why I motivate them to write vocabulary lists in a
spreadsheet program like Excel or Google, because
they can easily be used for creating exercises, games
or puzzles.
3.1 Foreign Language Learning
This chapter is mainly directed to language teachers
presenting ideas for learning material which is not
difficult to create. It may also serve to motivate
informatics teachers who introduce or repeat basic
functions of spreadsheet analysis software.
Therefore, the used functions are indicated as well.
3.1.1 Working with Vocabulary Lists
The basis for most of the presented tasks is a
vocabulary list. The more extensive it is, the more
possibilities it offers. Just a simple vocabulary list
with two columns – one for the native and one for
the foreign language – can be used for some nice
vocabulary exercises and games.
Figure 1 shows the vocabulary list “family” and
the matching exercise created by the students. The
original list (columns A and B) is copied and pasted
in the columns D and E. The English words are
sorted in ascending alphabetical order, the Italian
words in descending order.
Figure 1: Vocabulary list and matching exercise “Family”.
The matching exercise can be printed (only the
selected columns D and E) or done on the computer
when the columns A and B are hidden.
Students who have an Android Smartphone can
use Google spreadsheets as a basis for some free
learning apps like Flashcards from iUbiquity and a
vocabulary trainer for google docs from eLibera.
(Sabitzer, 2011b) When the applications are installed
on the smartphone, the Google spreadsheet with the
vocabulary to learn can be opened directly.
The same vocabulary list can be used for creating
a tandem-exercise, as shown in Figure 2 by
copying and pasting the original list and erasing
some fields in a way that student 1 has the solution
of student 2 and vice versa. The students work in
pairs where each partner gets a different worksheet.
In the following example student 1 begins and has to
translate the first word family in Italian. Student 2
can help or correct him/her because he/she has the
solution la famiglia. Then student 2 translates
his/her next word parents, and student 1 his/her next
word father, and so on.
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Figure 2: Tandem-exercise “Family”.
The tandem exercises are a good possibility to
make the students speak in the foreign language.
Instead of vocabulary, the worksheets can contain
also parts of sentences to complete, dialogues, dif-
ferrent schedules or points for discussion.
With the free Tandoku Generator (Ferry, 2007),
a template programmed in Excel, you can easily cre-
ate Tandokus (sudokos with words instead of num-
bers) by copying and pasting 9 words of the list into
the template. These tandokus can be printed out or
solved on the computer in Excel and are a good
alternative to traditional vocabulary exercises.
Figure 3: Tandoku “Family”.
Certainly, the vocabulary lists can also be used in
other downloadable or online software for educa-
tion like Hot Potatoes, Puzzlemaker or Lingofox.
Unfortunately, a description of these possibilities
would go beyond the limits of this paper. The
following Figure 4 shows a word serpent, created by
copying and pasting the original vocabulary list.
Figure 4: Word serpent “Family”, created by Lingofox.
3.1.2 Board Games and Playing Cards
Playing cards and other games is a very effective
and fun way of learning that can be well supported
by spreadsheet analysis software. Some teachers
may argue that it takes too much time to create dif-
ferent games. However it is not necessary that all is
done by the teacher. Students can also create their
learning material on their own. This saves time for
the teacher and in a relatively short time many dif-
ferent cards and other games can be created. Fur-
thermore, students are more active when they create
the material themselves and this may be more
effective than traditional ways of learning. This is
also supported by neurodidactical research based on
brain research: Knowledge cannot be transferred; it
must be newly created in the brain of each learner.
That is why learning should always be active.
(Herrmann, 2009), (Sabitzer, 2011a)
Creating playing cards in Excel or Google
tables is very easy, but language teachers often do
not think of this possibility. Two variants of the
game “Quartet” (a variant of the games “Go Fish”,
“Authors” or “Happy Families) will be presented at
this point. The object of these games is to collect
sets of four or six cards that belong together. The
number depends on the topic.
Figure 5 is the first example of a real Quartet
around the topic “Food” and contains subcategories
like fruit, vegetable, meat, fish etc.
Figure 5: Quartet “Food”.
Figure 6 is a variant with sets of six cards. It is a
Sextet concerning the six verb forms of the Italian
present tense.
Figure 6: Sextet “Present tense”.
Quiz cards are also easy to create, like the follo-
wing examples in Figure 7, with questions and an-
swers on the same side. They consist of two cells
where the text is rotated in different directions.
SPREADSHEETSFORLANGUAGELEARNING-CreativeIdeasforInformaticsandForeignLanguageLessons
131
Figure 7: Quiz cards “Health problems and advice”.
Quiz cards can be used alone or combined with
game boards like Trivial Pursuit or games of dice.
In the following Figure 8 you can see the game
board created together with the Quiz cards of Fi-
gure 7. The students need to know how to format
cells and number them automatically.
Figure 8: Game board for quizzes.
3.1.3 Competitions with Spreadsheets
If the students may use notebooks or computers in
the language lessons, many games and exercises can
be accomplished as competitions. A nice possibility
to occupy or relax the students during the last
minutes until the end of a lesson is the game
scrabble. Ten minutes are sufficient to play scrabble
with verbs. The students have to create a scrabble of
verbs using all different regular and irregular verbs
and all persons. Each word can be used only once in
the scrabble. The winner is the pupil who has the
most correct words. The best students may get a
good mark for their work.
Before beginning the competitions the students
should format the cells so that they are quadratic.
Each cell contains only one letter. Figure 9 shows a
part of a scrabble containing Italian reflexive verbs.
Figure 9 Scrabble – Verbs.
Based on this competition, my pupils had to do
an exercise at home. They expanded the scrabble to
a crossword by using some basic functions. They co-
pied the scrabble and pasted it in another spread-
sheet, where all filled cells got a border. Then all
words were deleted and the cells, which should con-
tain the beginning letter of a verb, were numbered.
As seen in Figure 10, the numbers and the corres-
ponding terms were indicated beside the crossword.
Figure 10: Expanded scrabble to a crossword.
Figure 11 shows a nice quiz game for grammar,
vocabulary or knowledge about a foreign country
may also be played in a spreadsheet analysis soft-
ware. In German it is called “Stadt-Land-Fluss”
(City-State-River). The pupils prepare a column for
each category like the following pattern for Russian
verbs:
Figure 11: Quiz game “Russian verbs” in a spreadsheet
analysis software.
The rules are as follows: One pupil has a list with
verbs that are numbered. This pupil counts silently
until another pupil says “Stop!” The number that the
first one had in mind is the number of the verb the
students have to conjugate and write in the table.
Who finishes the line first, gets a point, but only if
all forms are correct.
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3.2 Informatics Lessons
The tasks and exercises described in 3.1 have the
main scope to support language learning. None-
theless, all of them can also serve as examples for
introducing or revising basic functions of spread-
sheet analysis software like formatting, sorting, fil-
tering, working with references etc. Certainly, these
ideas can be transferred to other learning contents
and accomplished, at least partially, with other soft-
ware like database or for programming exercise in
different programming languages.
In this chapter, I would like to animate in-
formatics teachers to integrate varied topics of fo-
reign languages and other subjects in their lessons or
exercises. So they can help the pupils create lear-
ning products for practical use applications that they
really need and that may support their daily life, at
school as well as at home. These language content
exercises may increase motivation for spreadsheet
analysis as compared to only exercises with econo-
mical or mathematical content where pupils often
cannot see an immediate benefit.
Since interdisciplinary learning is considered to
be interesting and effective, informatics teacher
should offer their cooperation to language teachers
who are often glad to get technical support. There
are a lot of possibilities for working together, as de-
scribed in Sabitzer (2011b). At this point, I will
concentrate on examples realized in Microsoft
Excel.
The first one is a verb conjugator (Figure 12) that
I use for the introduction of the VLOOKUP
function. It is based on a list of irregular French
verbs and their present tense forms.
Figure 12: French verb conjugator.
A good example for the introduction or revision
of complex functions is the following encyclopae-
dia of the Spanish regions and their capitals. This
encyclopaedia may also serve as the template for
other topics. Figure 13 shows the menu (left) and the
query form where the capital can be entered and the
corresponding region is shown below (right). There
is certainly another query form for the search in the
other direction. The functions needed for this exer-
cise, besides the hyperlinks, are ISBLANK, WHEN,
and VLOOKUP.
Figure 13: Encyclopaedia “Spanish Regions”.
This encyclopaedia and other lexicons or diction-
naries may be used as a basis for various quizzes in
all subjects and for all topics. They are suitable for
the introduction or revision of many different
functions as well as the development of forms with
drop-down or other fields. The following multiple-
choice quiz about the languages of the world con-
tains 15 questions, each of them are on a separate
sheet (figure 14) with a feedback to the previous
question (in this case “The last answer is correct!”).
Figure 14: Question sheet.
The last sheet in this file shows the evaluation of
the whole quiz with a comment of: “Very good!” or
“You should learn more!!!” like in this example.
Figure 15: Evaluation form.
The necessary functions in the quiz, besides the
use of hyperlinks and option-fields, are WHEN, IS-
BLANK, COUNTA, and VLOOKUP.
4 SUMMARY
This paper is directed to informatics and foreign
language teachers and should give some creative
SPREADSHEETSFORLANGUAGELEARNING-CreativeIdeasforInformaticsandForeignLanguageLessons
133
ideas for the use of spreadsheets as a tool for
interdisciplinary lessons. The presented exercices
and tasks were designed based on neurodidactical
principles and combine learning contents of both
subjects. Some of the tasks are part of the project
“Brain-based Ideas for Informatics”, which is pre-
sently in progress. It aims at improving the learning
outcomes and results of a programming course at the
University of Klagenfurt in Austria. The evaluation
results will be presented in a further paper.
REFERENCES
Herrmann, U., 2009. Neurodidaktik: Grundlagen und
Vorschläge für gehirngerechtes Lehren und Lernen,
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Repko, A. F. (2008). Assessing Interdisciplinary Learning
Outcomes. In http://www.uta.edu/ints/faculty/REPKO
_Outcomes_AEQ.pdf
Sabitzer, B., 2011a. Neurodidactics: Brain-based Ideas for
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International Journal Of Learning, Volume 18, Issue
2, pp.167-178. Common Ground Publishing, Illinois.
Sabitzer, B., 201b. Informatics + Foreign Language
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