Easy Prototyping of Multimedia Interactive Educational Tools for

Language Learning based on Block Programming

Stefano Federici, Elisabetta Sergi and Elisabetta Gola

Dept. of Education, Psychology and Philosophy, University of Cagliari, Italy

Keywords: Programming-based Learning, Foreign Languages, Block Languages, Scratch, Computational Thinking.

Abstract: Teaching in the new Digital Era is getting more and more difficult due to the expanding gap between what

students and their teachers see as their media of election. Students would like to be engaged with

multimedia educational tools and they need, for their future, to learn the basics of coding. In order to

overcome the teachers’ difficulties in creating multimedia educational interactive tools for their students,

and to start using coding even in non-scientific topics, an interactive environment based on the metaphor of

building blocks, BlockLang, has been built. BlockLang is very similar to block-based programming

languages such as Scratch but it has been designed to teach to elementary students English phrases and

sentences from the food domain that, if correctly “coded”, will generate a corresponding picture on the

tool’s “stage”. The tool, built by a student of a non-technical degree in just a few weeks, has shown to be

effective when tested on 2

grade students. It has been very well accepted by the students and, as a further

bonus, it can be easily updated even by people that have no previous knowledge of computer programming.

1 INTRODUCTION

Can the usage of a block programming language, for

example a tool similar to the Scratch programming

language, help students to learn a foreign language?

Figure 1: Learning English by Block Programming.

In previous studies, the usage of block programming

has shown effective in improving the students’

performances in scientific tasks such as learning

physics (Lopez and Hernandez, 2015) but also in

humanistic tasks such as learning history (Gresse et

al., 2017) or English as a foreign language (Costa et

al., 2016). In those studies, the programming

language is used in order to write mathematical

equations applied to moving images or to build

interactive “stories” that illustrate a given historical

fact or English sentence.

In more recent studies, a different approach has

instead been followed, where a visual block-

programming tool is used in order to “give life” to

the components of the topic, for example the

components of an exponentiation operation (figure

2) or the components of a work of art (figure 3) by

programming their interactive behaviour. The

students, in this approach, learn through a

programming-based learning paradigm (Federici et

al., 2018).

Figure 2: Expressing the exponentiation operation 2

assembling visual blocks.

In those approaches the students and the teacher

must learn a reasonable amount of block-based

140

Federici, S., Sergi, E. and Gola, E.

Easy Prototyping of Multimedia Interactive Educational Tools for Language Learning based on Block Programming.

DOI: 10.5220/0007766201400153

In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2019), pages 140-153

ISBN: 978-989-758-367-4

programming in order to fruitfully use the strategy.

So, if teachers of scientific topics can be happy to

find a new way of engaging their students and of

improving their learning strategies, teachers of non-

scientific topics are less likely willing to test it with

their classes.

Figure 3: Programming the behaviour of the components

of a work of art.

In a previous work (Federici et al., 2015) we have

proposed a way to introduce teachers to coding by

means of a reverse process coming from students. In

order to overcome possible reluctance, we have now

designed a new strategy that can be taught of as an

introduction to the programming-based paradigm by

means of an environment modelled on the teacher’s

interests. A new simplified programming language,

reminiscent of the structure of the topic to be taught,

is designed in order to make students and teachers

aware of the mechanism of coding, but without the

necessary effort of fully understanding all the basic

-but, anyway, somewhat complex- concepts of

computer programming (figure 1).

By using a special-purpose tool, the design of the

new language is not extremely complex by itself, as

it can be done by someone that has learnt how to use

a block-programming environment just for a few

weeks. But the final new programming language is

extremely simpler to use and to be modified by

someone that does not know much about computer

programming.

Whereas in the previous approach a full

programming language is used to describe the

behaviour of the components of the topic, this new

approach hinges on the compositional properties of a

programming language that is now used in order to

describe the components itself, leaving the

description of their internal behaviour to

mechanisms that are hidden from the students and

the teacher.

It is important to note that the English learning

tool we have devised here, by applying block

programming to a very different topic such as

English as a second language learning, is not

intended to become a full-fledged tool to learn

English. The final purpose indeed is just having a

simple tool to introduce students to the basics of the

English language and to bridge teachers to the

open-ended possibilities of coding (Federici et al.,

2015). This approach is similar in some sense to

simple block programming tools (such as block;

Federici, 2001) to introduce students to the basics of

computer programming by overcoming their usual

initial difficulties.

2 USAGE OF INTERACTIVE

TOOLS FOR LANGUAGE

LEARNING

The study of the usage of interactive tools in foreign

language learning, and how these tools can improve

student’s performances, is something that has been

analysed many times (Atkinson, 1972; Levy, 1997;

Warschauer, 1998; Beatty, 2013). Specific studies

concentrated on foreign language acquisition at the

level of primary school (Neri et al, 2008; Chang et

al, 2010; Han, 2012; Pathan and Aldersi, 2014;

Moreno-León and Robles, 2015).

Learning a foreign language is something that

hinges on several different abilities: retaining the

correct translation of words, such as nouns,

adjectives, verbs; remembering how nouns and

adjectives are organized in noun groups;

remembering how noun groups are organized in

sentences by using verbs. Several studies have

suggested different ways of facilitating the

acquisition of a foreign language at the primary

school level, from robots (Chang, 2010; Han, 2012)

to games (Pathan and Aldersi et al., 2014) to stories

(Moreno-León and Robles, 2015). All this

approaches hinges on the active learning paradigm

(Prince, 2004; Bachelor et al, 2012) where users

must actively take part in the learning process.

What we propose in this paper is along the lines

of active learning teaching and programming-based

learning (Federici, 2018). Indeed students, by using

a simplified visual programming language, build a

syntactic structure that creates a drawing of the

described situation. By using this strategy, students

not only have the chance to test the meaning of the

individual foreign language “components”, but they

can also see if the final English sentence

corresponds to the phrase or sentence that they are

translating (figure 4).

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141

Figure 4: Learning the meaning of two apples.

Students must fully understand how all the parts of

the English phrase or sentence fit together, in order

to correctly create them by means of a simplified

programming language.

In order to test this hypothesis, we have run an

experiment on the students of two 2nd grade classes.

The specific domain selected for the experiment was

one that the teachers felt as particularly meaningful

for their young students, namely the domain of food.

Our working hypothesis was that, by assembling

language elements in an interactive way, students

will remember better their relative position, by

putting at work different learning strategies at the

same time (Seemüller et al., 2012; Udomon et al.,

2013).

Furthermore, in this tool the programming

elements of the same category were all based on a

common underlying structure that even a foreign

language teacher, with no prior knowledge of

computer programming, can easily update and reuse,

increasing the number of linguistic components

proposed by the tool and enlarging the student’s

vocabulary.

3 LEARNING PHRASES AND

SENTENCES FROM THE FOOD

DOMAIN IN A PRIMARY

SCHOOL

Young Italian learners of 2

grade use mostly oral

explanations. They learn very common words, such

as apple, orange, bread and very simple sentences

such as “I have one apple” or “I like apples”.

The most common mistakes made by young

Italian 2

grade learners are of a different nature

when they must cope with open vs closed questions.

In Italy, 2

grade students use mostly oral tests or

multi-choice questions and their written tests, if any,

are usually fill-the-gap exercises with only one or -at

most- two words to be filled-in for each phrase or

sentence.

As to short open questions, the errors are mostly

due to:

 spelling

 forgotten words

Errors in plurals or in using the wrong word tend to

be rare.

Spelling errors are likely due to the oral nature of

their learning, so that they tend to Italianise the

spelling, by using the Italian transliteration of the

pronunciation of the word, e.g. writing

 carot instead of carrot

 fisC instead of fish

 milC instead of milk

 KEIK instead of cake

As to forgotten words, they tend to forget words that

have no Latin root, that is words that are very

dissimilar from the corresponding Italian word, e.g.

 like (Italian piacere)

 milk (latte)

 breakfast (colazione)

 lunch (pranzo)

 dinner (cena).

When it comes to closed question instead, they

 very rarely choose the wrong translation of

single words even when they are very different

from the corresponding Italian ones. Likely, the

suggestion they get is enough to them

 they tend to choose the wrong verb in

sentences where the correct verb is not the

literal translation of the verb used in the Italian

sentence.

So, for example, in Italian people do a meal (instead

of have), they have something (instead of have got)

and they not do something (instead of do not do).

4 THE EXPERIMENT:

“PROGRAMMING” ENGLISH

SENTENCES

The experiment involved a total of 36 students from

two 2

grade classes from a local elementary

school. The experiment started about at the end of

the school year, when the students were studying

specific words and sentences from the food domain,

and was run during school hours already devoted to

English. We followed what in the previous

experiment has demonstrated a good protocol in

preparing the classes (Federici, 2018):

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 the teachers of the school selected two 2

grade

classes that they thought were roughly similar,

basing on their general skills

 one of the two classes was the test class where

students would have been building English

phrases and sentences from the food domain by

means of the simplified programming language.

The other one was the control class, where

students would have been learning phrases and

sentences from the food domain by following

standard explanations (see Table 1)

 not to interfere too much with the completion of

the explanation of all English topics, the time

spent in studying food domain words and

sentences was limited to 3 sessions of 2 hours

each (that is about 1 hour of real work for each

session)

 a preliminary session of 2 hours was devoted to

introduce the students to block programming

principles

 the test was done after the 4th session

Table 1: Learning in the different groups.

Group

Learning

Test

Introduction to block-programming

Creation of interactive phrases and

sentences

Control

Standard lessons

From the test group we wanted to clearly understand

if students could get good performances in

translating English by allowing them to build

interactive phrases and sentences in a fun way that,

when “run”, will automatically create visual

representations of the phrase or sentence. At the

same time the students were acquiring the basics of

coding.

It is worth noting that students in the test group,

in the end, spent significantly less time in exercising

on phrases and sentences of the food domain than

their peer in the control group, for two reasons: the

first one is that their peers started studying the

English food domain while they were introduced to

block programming; the second one is that each

session in the computer lab required a significant

amount of the lesson time to be spent in technical

operations.

As already said, an important part of the

experiment was to make sure that the internal

working of the programming blocks -created to

represent English phrases and sentences- was

programmed in such a way that even an English

teacher, with no prior knowledge of computer

programming, could easily update the set of phrases

and sentences of the food domain in the simplest and

more intuitive way.

4.1 Teaching 2

Grade Students How

to Manage Visual Programming

Blocks

In order to allow the students to learn how to build

interactive English phrases and sentences they were

first exposed to projects created by using a

programming language and then they were taught

the basics of computer programming. As mentioned

above, we choose a programming language based on

the block metaphor, Snap (Harvey and Moenig,

2010, very similar to Scratch) specifically designed

to easily teach computer programming to children 8-

11, and that allowed for the easy creation of

colourful interactive objects.

The structure of a programming environment for

a visual block language is very easy and quick to

grasp (figure 5).

Figure 5: Creating block sequences in Snap by dragging-

and-dropping blocks from the block area (to the left) to

the script area (to the right).

All “instructions” are represented by coloured

blocks that are visible in the block area, at the left-

hand side of the window). By dragging the blocks

from the block area to the central part of the tool

(right area in figure 5), users can build sequences of

blocks, called “scripts”, for their characters to

behave and interact as expected.

Blocks are organized in categories. Like building

blocks, they are grouped in different bins with

respect to their color/function. Blocks in each

category can be accessed by clicking the desired

button right above the block list, at the top left.

Among the available categories in Snap we find

Movement (to move the characters of the project),

Looks (to change their appearance), Control (to

make available basic programming structures such

as repetition of a given behaviour), Sensing (to allow

Snap characters to “sense” their environment), etc.

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The organization of blocks in categories is

important, so that users can quickly find the desired

block by its function.

4.1.1 First Session: Arousing Enthusiasm

In the first session, as in the previous experiment, we

allowed students to play with several projects

created with Snap. Having only 4 sessions available,

we had to arouse students’ enthusiasm very quickly

towards the possibility of building interactive

objects that would behave as expected when

executed in the block programming environment.

The first projects were minigames that allowed them

to move several characters on the Stage of the

programming environment (see for example the

seagull in figure 6, reminiscent of the Angry Birds

character).

Figure 6: Moving-around in the Wind Wings minigame.

4.1.2 First Session: Introducing the Students

to Block Programming

The main project shown in the first session aimed at

showing to the students how they could move

programming blocks around and how to assemble

them in a “script”, in order to get the correct result

on the Stage once the script was executed.

Figure 7: Snap minigame to learn block programming.

For example, to build the “car” project (figure 7), the

students had to drag blocks from the left block area

to create the two scripts shown in the central script

area so that the red car in the top right stage area

moves left and right when the user presses the

left/right arrow keys. The behaviour of each script

can be also triggered by directly clicking the script.

Assembling scripts and activating them by click

are the exact same mechanisms the students had then

to use in order to assemble and “run” English

phrases and sentences.

At the end of the first session they were eager to

start using the tool to study English too.

4.1.3 Second Session: Learning How to

Handle Words of the Food Domain by

using Colored Blocks

In the second session, the students started using the

tool specifically created for them in order to build

English phrases and sentences by assembling

colored programming blocks and by running them.

The tool, that we called BlockLang, has been built

by using BloP (Block Programming environment,

Federici and Gola, 2014), a modification of the Snap

environment that allows to easily build custom

block-programming environments. Even if Snap

already allows for some important customization

features, such as creating new custom blocks, BloP

is specifically designed so that the new tool created

with BloP can be safely used even by young users:

 without the worry of impairing the environment

by doing something inappropriate

 by organizing the new custom blocks in new

meaningful categories

 by hiding “support sprites”, that is sprite

specifically created to handle the task at hand,

but that must not be moved or be removed by the

users

The BlockLang interface is very similar to the Snap

environment (figure 8).

Figure 8: The BlockLang environment: the categories (at

the top left), the blocks (at the bottom left), the scripts (in

the center) and the Stage (at the top right).

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The interface is fully in Italian (except, of course, for

the English phrase/sentence blocks) so that young

students are not overcharged by too many English

items to learn in advance. It is worth noting that,

thanks to the customization features offered by

Snap, the interface can be easily translated to other

languages so that the tool can be used to learn

English food phrases/sentences by students of other

foreign languages.

At the top left corner, we see the new block

categories -specifically created for BlockLang

thanks to the BloP features- for organizing the

word/phrase blocks into meaningful groups (figure

9).

Figure 9: BlockLang block categories.

The BlockLang categories to handle food domain

phrases and sentences have been enriched by adding

a few words already known by the students, such as

color names and numbers. The BlockLang

categories are then:

 Food, that is both singular (both countable and

uncountable) and plural names of food items,

such as apple, carrot, cheese

 Colors, names of colors for food items

 Meals, names of main meals, that is breakfast,

lunch and dinner

 Verbs, that is verbs related to the food domain

such as have (for meals) and other base English

verbs, such as be, have, like

 Numbers, numbers from 1 to 10

 Adjectives, that is adjectives related to the food

domain, namely hungry

In this very first English session, the students learnt

how food blocks (that is blocks from the Food

category) create visual representations on the Stage.

For example, the “the bread” block when dragged to

the script area and “run” by clicking it, it draws a

loaf of bread on the Stage together with its Italian

translation “il pane” at the top of the Stage (figure

10).

Each food, when corresponding to a countable item,

has a “companion” block with a fillable gap for an

argument representing the number of items. For

example, we have the the apple block but also the

ONE apple block. Note that redundancy, in block

languages, is a very well-accepted mechanism,

largely used by Scratch and Snap. The capital letters

are just a cue to the students that the gap must be

filled by another block. The word ONE, for example,

Figure 10: Running a Food block.

suggests that the type of the blocks that correctly

fills the gap is a number. If the students try to run the

block without filling the gap, they see an error

message on the Stage (figure 11).

Figure 11: Warning message “you must fill gap ONE with

a block!”.

Instead, when the gap is correctly filled by a block

from the Number category (e.g., the block “two”),

the final argument “e” is replaced by typing the

correct singular/plural ending (in this case “es”)

inside the gap and the script is clicked, the correct

result is shown on the Stage (figure 12).

Figure 12: Running the “two apples” script after filling the

gap “ONE” of the “ONE apple” block with a “two” block

from the Number category and the “e” gap with “es”.

The correct translation “due mele” shows up at the

top of the Stage and two apples are drawn on the

Stage.

Every script that does not contain unfilled gaps

can be also run, so that its visual meaning is shown

on the Stage. So, even running the “two” block will

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show the number 2 on the Stage (figure 13) and

running, e.g., the “dinner” block from the Meals

category will draw a classic dinner scene on the

Stage (figure 14).

Figure 13: Running the “two” script.

Figure 14: Running the “dinner” script.

At the end of this session, many students were able

to correctly anticipate the category where to find the

correct block corresponding to a given Italian word.

They were also able to assemble simple nominal

constituents such as “three lemons” or “four ice

creams” and to show the outcome on the Stage by

running the corresponding scripts. Every time a

phrase/sentence was shown on the overhead

projector the correct pronunciation of the item was

practised.

4.1.4 Third Session: Learning All the Words

from the Experiment Vocabulary

In the third session the students revised what they

had learned in the first session and learned (or

revised) all the words in the Food, Colors, Meals and

Numbers categories.

In this session we were showing on the overhead

projector of the classroom the Stage of our tool in

which they could read the Italian sentence and look

at the corresponding drawing. For example, looking

at the noun phrase “pranzo” they were guided to go

to the Meals category and drag and run the lunch

block on the script area (figure 15).

Stage for lunch

The lunch block of the Meals

category

Figure 15: Running the lunch block.

At the end of this session, many students were able

to correctly anticipate the category and the

block/script that would create on the Stage the

objects/scene that was shown to them on the

overhead projector. Every time a new

phrase/sentence was shown on the overhead

projector the correct pronunciation of the

phrase/sentence was practised.

4.1.5 Third Session: Learning Phrases and

Sentences based on Words from the

Food Domain

Due to the limited vocabulary usually learned by 2

grade students, the phrases and sentences in this

experiment on the food vocabulary could not be very

different from the ones they had learned so far. The

experiment has then been based on the following

phrases/sentences:

 I like/don’t like Food

 I have got Food

 I am/am not hungry

 Food is/are Color

 I have Meal

The students then practised how to build sentences

like I like the bread, I have got seven lemons, I am

hungry, the chocolate is brown, I have breakfast.

Note that, due to the stepwise learning of the English

language in the Italian primary school, the students

were thaught to always use the article “the” in front

of names -as it happens in Italian- when there was

no cardinal number. So, they learned to say I like the

lemon instead of I like lemon, as if they were always

referring to a specific item of food. That is why, in

the BlockLang tool, there is no single lemon block,

but only the the lemon and ONE lemon blocks.

All the new blocks in this session were from the

Verbs and Adjectives categories. So, for example,

by dragging, assembling and running the I have

BREAKFAST block from the Verb category and the

dinner block from the Meal category they could

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build the sentence I have dinner (figure 16), that is

the correct translation of “Io ceno”.

Figure 16: Running the I have dinner script.

In the same way, by using the THE MILK is WHITE

block from the Verb category, the the lemon block

from the Food category, and the yellow block from

the Color category, they could build the sentence the

lemon is yellow (figure 17), that is the correct

translation of “il limone è giallo”.

Figure 17: Running the the lemon is yellow script.

4.1.6 Fourth Session: Reinforcing the Food

Domain

In the fourth and final session, the students

reinforced the knowledge of phrases and sentences

from the food domain by practising how to build

phrases and sentences using the BlockLang tool just

by looking just at the objects/scene and at their

Italian translation shown on the teacher’s Stage and

without any suggestion by the teacher. They were

serious and followed all the teacher’s instructions

very carefully as they knew that, in the next session,

they would have had a test.

In order to get the correct translation of a full

sentence they had to:

 identify the correct category for each word in the

sentence

 drag the correct blocks from the correct category

into the script area

 assemble the blocks by filling all the gaps in

order to build the correct script

So, for example, in order to build the correct

translation of the sentence “il limone è giallo” (the

lemon is yellow) they had to drag the the lemon,

yellow and THE MILK is WHITE blocks from the

Food, Colors and Verbs categories respectively. The

they had to assemble them in the script area in the

correct order, suggested by the uppercase fillers, that

is THE MILK and WHITE, of the is block. Finally,

they had to run the script in order to check, on the

Stage, if the correct sentence and the correct drawing

were showing up on the Stage (figure 17).

When they were doing mistakes, they were

getting a warning and/or a non-matching drawing or

a non-matching sentence on the Stage. For example,

if they were choosing the verb are instead of the

verb is, they were getting both the warning “the verb

ARE needs a PLURAL food!” and an incomplete “il

limone” (that is the lemon) instead of the “il limone

è giallo” (the lemon is yellow) on top of the Stage

(figure 18).

Figure 18: Results of running the wrong sentence the

lemon are yellow.

Instead, if they were using the the lemon and yellow

blocks in the wrong order, they were still getting and

incomplete sentence at the top of the Stage and the

warning “fill the THE MILK gap with a FOOD

block!” (figure 19).

Figure 19: Results of running the wrong sentence yellow is

the lemon.

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4.2 Strengths and Weaknesses of using

the Blocklang Tool

The effective support of an interactive tool in

learning a given topic depends on the “freedom” you

have in creating what you think is a correct item for

the topic at stake. Of course, the more freedom you

have, the higher the complexity, the more time you

need to fully learn the task. Conversely, less

freedom -that is less possibility of doing mistakes-

corresponds to a lower number of features of the

topic that you can learn by using the tool, but it also

requires a shorter time needed to learn those

features. In the BlockLang tool the learnable

features related to phrases and sentences from the

food domain have been limited, on purpose, to the

following list:

 recognition of the correct word (that is correct

noun, verb, adjective)

 usage of the correct ending for singular/plural

words

 usage of the correct construction for noun

phrases containing numerals

 correct agreement in number between noun

group and verb

 correct construction for sentences

So, just to give a few examples, the student had to:

 choose nut instead of, e.g., cake when

translating “noce”

 use nuts instead of nut when translating the

plural form

 use ten instead of the when building a noun

group containing a numeral, like ten bananas

 use are instead of is when building a plural

sentence like the carrots are orange

 use I have lunch instead of I lunch when

translating a sentence indicating that I’m

having a meal

So, by using the available building blocks, they

could not practice the correctly spelling of a given

word, nor they were forced to think of the correct

word to use as a correct translation. They could just

test the available blocks, until they saw the correct

translation and drawing on the Stage. So, they learnt

how to select the correct word among the (little

amount) of available ones, not how to immediately

associate each Italian word to the corresponding

English word.

When they were applying the wrong feature (that

is word, singular/plural, agreement, construction,

etc) they got a double feedback: an orange warning

message at the top of the Stage and/or the wrong

drawing on the Stage. By quick trial and error, they

could build the correct translation, so they didn’t get

frustrated and they could -hopefully- get the correct

translation in a shorter time for each new

phrase/sentence to translate.

4.3 Blind-testing Knowledge about

English Phrases and Sentences

After the fourth session had ended, the knowledge

acquired by the students of the two groups about

words, phrases and sentences of the food domain has

been tested by giving them a test with 12 closed

questions and 11 open questions. The test was done

completely on paper, so that the students of the

control group, used to paper and pencil, could be on

a par with the students of the test group. On the

other side, students of the test group were in a slight

difficult position as they were used to complete this

kind of test by using the tool.

The test was prepared in collaboration with the

teachers and administered by the teachers of the two

classes. The results of the test were anonymized

(both for privacy reasons and for blind-testing

purposes) and then sent to us. The teachers, due do

the young age of their students, insisted on having a

test made of closed questions as they didn’t think

their students could be able to correctly answer to

open questions, being them used at most to fill-the-

gap assignments. But we wanted to see if using a

block programming-based approach could have a

major impact on learning the “structure” of the

English phrases. So, we asked to add a further test

based on open questions, even if this was something

that the students were not used to.

The closed questions were in the majority

two-words noun phrases (7 questions) where the

students had to select the correct food domain word,

and short sentences (5 questions) where the students

had to select the correct verb or the correct word

order. The open questions instead were mostly

two-words noun phrases (9 questions) and a few

short sentences (2 questions) where the students had

to write down the correct translation.

Taking into account the features of the tool, we

were expecting the test class doing well in those

tasks that were better supported by the tool, namely

using the correct singular/plural form, the correct

verb and the correct construction. Instead we were

expecting them to do less (hopefully, slightly) well

in the tasks less or not supported by the tool, like

writing down a word by using the correct spelling or

even remembering the correct translation of each

word in the phrase/sentence.

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Taking into account the common mistakes made

by young Italian students of 2

grade, the errors

made by the students of the two classes were due to:

 spelling

 wrong singular/plural

 wrong word

 missing word

 wrong word order/verb structure

Due to the different nature of the two tests, the

distribution of errors was different in the two tests,

as shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Distribution of the different sources of errors.

Closed questions

Open Questions

wrong spelling

30%

wrong sing/plur

11%

wrong word

48%

wrong word

missing word

50%

wrong word

order

52%

wrong word order

4.4 Test Results

The results followed the patterns foreseen when

taking into consideration the features that the

students could learn by using the BlockLang tool,

but the differences were less than expected. Indeed,

students in the test group found slightly more

difficult to remember the correct translation of food

domain words with respect to the students in the

control group even if they were used to search for

those words by trial and error and hadn’t had time to

practice the recall of the correct translation of a

given word without using the tool. Instead, as

expected, they did much better than the control

group when it came to choose the correct word order

or the correct structure of the sentence.

So, in the first test based on closed questions the

students in the control group got a better overall

score (Table 3) as they did slightly worse at

remembering the correct words (22% of error vs

21% of errors in the control group) when they had to

choose, e.g., between nut and cake as the correct

translation of “noce”, but they only made 27% of

errors when they had to choose for the correct word

order choosing, e.g., between orange are the carrots

and the carrots are orange or when they had to

choose the correct structure, e.g., between I not like

the cakes and I don’t like the cakes . Instead, in the

control group the error rate for these sentences was

40%.

Table 3: Errors on closed questions.

Test group

Control Group

wrong word

22%

wrong word

21%

wrong word order

27%

wrong word order

40%

GLOBAL

24%

GLOBAL

29%

Instead, in the second test, based on open questions,

the students in the control group got a better overall

score (Table 4).

Table 4: Errors on open questions.

Test group

Control Group

wrong spelling

44%

wrong spelling

37%

wrong sing/plur

15%

wrong sing/plur

15%

wrong word

12%

missing word

81%

missing word

55%

wrong word order

GLOBAL

24%

GLOBAL

21%

There are two interesting things to note. The first

one is that even if the test group, as expected, does

not remember a lot of translations (81% of

phrase/sentences have at least one missing word),

nonetheless when they use a word, they are more

accurate than the control group (only 8% of wrong

words instead of 12%). Second, if we don’t take into

account the features whose training is not

specifically supported by BlockLang (that is spelling

and rote learning of single word translations) the

difference between the two groups decreases

sensibly, with even a slight superiority of the test

group, that is 8% vs 9% (Table 5).

Table 5: Errors on open questions (revised).

Test group

Control Group

wrong sing/plur

15%

wrong sing/plur

15%

wrong word

12%

wrong word

order

wrong word order

GLOBAL

Even if the students in the test group don’t

remember well the translation of each word, we are

confident that this can improve when using the tool

for a longer time. In any case, the rote memorization

of a word is something that cannot be “seen”, so it is

beyond the purposes of the BlockLang tool.

Memorization is something that can be reached by

repetition. The students in the test group could

exercise only for less than half of the time of the

other class (namely 3 hours instead of 8).

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5 EASILY INCREASING THE

TOOL VOCABULARY

Students have shown that they can learn with a

lower error rate the features of an English language

topic when it is taught by means of an interactive

tool based on the block programming metaphor. But

today interactive tools for teaching English are a

widespread strategy. If the tool would need an expert

programmer every time the teacher wants to extend

the tool vocabulary by adding a new word, the usage

of the tool would be likely very limited. The strategy

of creating a full-blown tool for building English

sentences, with all the necessary words already

plugged in, would not be a good solution as it would

make finding the correct block very difficult,

especially for young students.

Even if the Snap tool is a general programming

tool, its block-programming metaphor allows just

after a few weeks to build very complex projects

even to people that didn’t know how about computer

programming in advance. However, this does not

mean that an English teacher would want to invest

even a few weeks to learn block-programming. So,

in order to make the BlockLang tool more user-

friendly, we set up the BlockLang tool so to

encapsulate the scripts’ complexity inside several

general blocks (e.g. the ARTICLE FOOD block) that

allow the English teachers to start learning the basics

of block-programming very gradually by quickly

updating the tool.

In order to add a new noun phrase, the steps

needed are just the following:

1. unlock the BlockLang tool

2. duplicate a block of the desired category

3. change the block features and add the

necessary visual elements

4. lock the BlockLang tool

So, for example, if we want to add to the tool the

cookie food, after unlocking the tool by shift-

clicking the BloP icon at the top left corner and

selecting “Unlock GUI” (figure 20), we can just

duplicate a similar countable food block, e.g. apple

(figure 21) by right-clicking it and selecting

“duplicate block definition…” in the contextual

menu.

Then we can change each element of the block name

(e.g. the appl root, figure 22) and each element of

the block definition (e.g. the “mela” translation of

the singular form, figure 22) by clicking it and

updating its value.

Figure 20: Locking and Unlocking the BlockLang tool –

steps 1 and 4.

Figure 21: Adding new Food blocks – step 2.

Figure 22: Adding new Food blocks – step 3a. Changing

root (from appl to cooki).

Figure 23: Adding new Food blocks – step 3b. Changing

singular form (from mela to biscotto).

The block definition for a countable noun (Figure

23) contains the following information: article for

the singular form, article for the plural form,

singular form, plural form, ending of the singular

form, ending of the plural form, gender.

When adding a new Food item, we need a

“costume” for it, that is an image that will show up

on the Stage when we run the corresponding block.

Adding an image to BlockLang is straightforward:

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just drag the image to the “Costume” tab of the tool

(Figure 24).

Figure 24: Adding new Food blocks – step 3c. Adding an

image for the new food.

Now we have just to lock the tool back up, by shift-

clicking the tool logo again (figure 21).

There are other possibilities of customization.

For example, if we want to add/create several new

words, but don’t want to make them all visible to the

students (e.g. to allow them to learn new words in a

stepwise process) we can individually or globally

hide/show the blocks in the categories by using the

right-click menu (figure 25).

Figure 25: Showing and hiding custom blocks.

6 PROGRAMMING-BASED

LEARNING: ANALYSIS OF

THE RESULTS

What follows from the results of the two tests is that

even adding a different kind of interactivity, namely

operations reminiscent of block-programming, with

respect to the classic interactive educational tools for

learning English, improves the performance on the

features specifically designed in the interactive tool.

And this even if, to learn how to use this tool,

students devote less time to exercising.

We explore the possible reasons in the following

sections. We want just to notice here that

programming-based learning does not require, for

every new topic, 3 or 4 more two-hour sessions than

the standard classroom learning. Indeed, we must

remember that the first two-hour session was

devoted to introduce computer programming in a

block-based environment, and that the first part of

the second session was devoted to learning how to

use BlockLang. When this computer-supported

educational methodology is acquired by the class,

part of the time spent in teaching and exercising can

be fruitfully replaced by self-exploration of the items

made available in the tool.

6.1 Explanation of the Results

The results of this experiment show that even less

exercise is not a drawback if it is replaced by other

kinds of meaningful activities that gives the students

further insight in what is behind the specific topic

they are studying. A lot of exercise (more than 8

hours spent in just translating food domain

phrases/sentences) proves certainly effective for a

short-term evaluation. But, as shown in previous

experiments, we think that when time passes by,

students tend to forget the constructions they have

learnt because they have just memorized them, but

they have not deeply internalized how a noun

phrase, a number, an agreement or a verb really

works in an English sentence. Instead, by

assembling the basic items to form a sentence and by

getting an immediate visual feedback, the students

are forced to see the elements that corresponds to the

English translation in a dynamic way.

6.1.1 Handling Interactive Objects to

Understand and Remember a given

Topic

To allow the student to test their knowledge about

English phrases and sentences we could build an

interactive project that will ask them just to click

each word in the translation in the correct order.

However, this is not much different from writing

down the translation on a piece of paper. On the

contrary, this tool, even if likely more fun, would be

an even weaker training than writing down the

translation as the user would not train the spelling of

the word.

A good way of using a visual programming

language such as Snap is instead to create an

interactive model of the problem by creating

interactive objects for each single component of the

problem. Those objects must be assembled in the

correct way so adding memorization of the dynamic

process. To create the correct phrase/sentence the

student will have then to know which kind of

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151

component must be used to fill a gap and move the

component to the right gap.

All these elements are clearly visible in the list of

blocks of BlockLang (figure 26) so for the student

they are tangible objects whose corresponding “real

object” can be seen in the drawings shown on the

Stage.

Figure 26: Interactive objects clearly visible in the block

categories of BlockLang.

Several different learning strategies are working in

this case together (Udomon et al., 2013, Seemüller et

al., 2012) to build an interactive virtual model that

will help the student to improve the recall of the

topic. Indeed, each element of the correct answer

(each noun, each verb, etc) is “physically”

represented in the project by an interactive object

that can be seen. Furthermore, each element must be

“physically” manipulated by the student (for

example by selecting it and by dragging and

dropping it) in order to correctly place it in the script

area.

6.2 Applying Programming-based

Learning to Other Disciplines

The strategy discussed in this paper, that allows

students to acquire a deeper understanding of

English words, phrases and sentences, in our view is

not limited to foreign languages. We think that every

task that has a “linguistic” structure can be

mimicked by building blocks that are reminiscent of

visual programming languages.

Just to give an example, a deeper text

comprehension (a topic that is currently under

continuous investigation at all school levels) could

be reached by using the common tools of computer

programming to make students understand the

underlying meaning of constructs such as every time

that (cycle) or what does it mean use a word like eat

to mean a complex list of steps (that is opening the

mouth, inserting food inside, etc.

7 CONCLUSIONS

In this paper we illustrated the positive outcomes of

a recent experiment in two 2

grades classes

proving that the metaphor of block programming can

be introduced as an effective strategy to improve the

performances and the interest of the students even

for topics apparently so far from computer

programming like learning a foreign language.

The devised strategy is not limited to language

learning but can be fruitfully applied to further

linguistic disciplines.

The strategy is simple enough so that even

teachers of non-scientific disciplines can use a

simplified version of computer programming in

order to build their own multimedia and interactive

tools.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Stefano Federici and Elisabetta Gola express their

gratitude for the support of Fondazione Banco di

Sardegna within the project ``Science and its Logics:

The Representation's Dilemma'', Cagliari, number:

F72F16003220002.

All authors would like to thank the Istituto

Comprensivo n°2 school in Sinnai and the teachers

Debora e Donatella for their help in designing and

administering the experiment.

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