Summarizing Skills Game Idea
My workshop proposal related to academic writing for English Language Learners was accepted for the CambodiaTESOL Conference in Phnom Penh in February. When I submitted my proposal earlier this fall I knew that I wanted to provide a web-based tool to participants and use it as the basis of an activity during my workshop, but it wasn’t until thinking about the game prototype in this course that I had a clear objective.
Basic Idea / Goal
Summarizing is a difficult, but essential, academic skill. When learners have a limited vocabulary and confidence with grammar, it is even a greater challenge. This often leads students to inadvertently plagiarize, paraphrasing while relying too heavily on the original author’s vocabulary or voice. It is hard to discuss this issue with students without coming across as too severe. Introducing or developing summarizing skills within the context of a game may help alleviate this tension.
Characters / Game Elements
Introducing a persona may keep the game from feeling too much like a test. For example, at the beginning of the game the player could be introduced to a time in the near future where people are so inundated with visual content that many fear they may lose their ability to read. The player is asked to help make difficult passages more inviting in hopes of reviving the public’s interest in text.
Basic Interactions
The game will present the player with a text sample to read for comprehension. Then, they are prompted to write a summary. In early levels, advice will be provided (try to write a summary that is shorter than the original text, avoid borrowing key words and expressions, etc.) for scaffolding.
When the player is finished with their summary, it is evaluated against the original text programmatically. First, a function will check for borrowed words and highlight these words in red. Then, another method will check remaining words for close similarity to original words (substitutive plagiarism). Finally, the length of the summary will be compared against the original.
Besides syntax highlighting, the player will be given a score on a sliding scale. If the score is above a certain threshold, the player will be invited to move on to the next level, which will present a slightly more difficult text sample in terms of length and vocabulary.
Uncertainty
The biggest issue to figure out will be difficulty levels and total game length. It would probably be helpful to draw upon existing text samples based upon different reading levels. ReadTheory and Newsela might be good places to start.
