Sing to learn the foreign!
Learning foreign language has never been as easy as we thought. When we’re talking about foreign language, first thing that came into our mind is how hard, boring, and time consuming it can be for someone to learn. Some people are gifted with the talent to learn languages easily, and some are bound to the challenges of being stuck at pronouncing, understanding, etc.
Researchers at University Putra Malaysia have come up with technology or innovation that can aid the learning process of a certain foreign language. Animated Karaoke Assisted Vocabulary Learning (Japanese) and Spanish Songs with Animation Video (Spanish) is a sing-along multimedia screen page in form of CD – compact disk – that consist of many technical features such as; synchronized animation, text lyrics for foreign language learners, and transliteration – an idea of how to pronounced a word by putting in a familiar alphabet. Both of these innovations share the same goal which is to make learning languages easy, fun, and affordable.
They came up with this innovation that provide both verbal and visual experience – the Dual-coding Theory – to make the learning process a much more enjoyable experience. Dual-coding theory is a theory of cognition that proposed the idea of how the formation of mental images and verbal association can aid learning process to be more fun and easily understandable.
According to project leader of Animated Karaoke Assisted Vocabulary Learning (Japanese) Dr. Muhammad Aliff Redzuan, PhD (Applied Comparative Linguistics), when students watch animations while reading the text, they can understand and memorize quicker because it stimulate their brain repetitively.
Researches also developed this innovation as an additional aid material for their foreign language students. “As academician, we always thought of what can we do to aid the students to have more materials in teaching and learning foreign languages,” said one of the researcher of this project, Dr. Salina, PhD (Applied Comparative Linguistics).
Moreover, the innovation aims to boost students’ confidence, motivation, and learning experience in three aspects; cognitive, affective, and psychomotor – development of organized patterns of muscular activities guided by signals from the environment. According to Dr. Salina, results from a survey showed that the use of songs as teaching and learning material is very effective in enhancing students’ interest, confidence, and satisfaction level.
Researchers understands that students have limited access to references and imported learning materials can be expensive. Hence, the innovation give access to quality, fun, and engaging learning materials at a more reasonable price as the product is designed to meet standard teaching and learning process.
“Spanish learning materials at this level are available at market but they are imported and the cost is very high due to exchange rate and all,” said Dr. Salina. With comparable contents, researchers believe that this innovation is able to become an alternative source of learning material.
This innovation is the first Animated Karaoke created and developed 100% by Malaysians. Dr. Muhammad Alif Redzuan and Dr. Salina are both prominent figure and have won awards for their projects. Animated Karaoke Assisted Vocabulary Learning (Japanese) won silver medal in IIDEL 2018, Spanish Songs with Animation Video (Spanish) won bronze medal in Pameran Rekacipta, Penyelidikan, dan Inovasi 2016 (PRPI16), silver medal in K-Novasi UKM 2019 exhibition.
The Spanish Songs with Animation Video project by Dr. Salina also have 30 copyrights of animations and five songs; Mi Familia, Los Colores, Los Numeros, Las Adjetivas, and Las Conjugaciones.
When were asked about new future idea, innovation, and collaboration, Dr. Salina said “of course we have many innovation that we want to produce. Especially innovation involving language studies that beneficial for students and innovation that fits the educational purpose.” For this innovation there are no collaboration as they have no intention to commercialize and they only targeted local institutions but the researchers welcome any collaborating partners to involve in any other innovation that can be found in UPM’s Science Park website.
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