Background: Inspiration for Chunky English Series Apps
I recently completed several apps under the Chunky English Series Brand. It was only possible because of LiveCode. This is the story of how this all came about.
Japan’s English education is complex and layered. The short of it is that English language education in Japan has many problems. To highlight this, allow me to introduce a report by the Educational Testing Services (ETS) summarizing the performance of those taking TOEFL – a standardized test of English recognized around the world. Japan ranked 135th out of 163, even falling behind North Korea which ranked 96th and Thailand 116th. How is this possible? Isn’t Japan the developed country that gave us Sony, Nintendo, and Robotics? Maybe that is one of the mysteries of Japan? The average Japanese national, despite receiving 6 years of compulsory English education and usually several more years at University still can’t have a rudimentary conversation in English.
One of the problems of English language education in Japan is the lack of fluency training. In order to understand that, we need to delve into the meaning of fluency. Now, there is a fluency for each of the 4 skills: listening, reading, etc. but people normally think of speaking fluency when they hear that word – fair enough, take speaking for example. The average English speaker utters around 120-180 words per minute, which is between 2-3 words per second. Now that is pretty fast. Without getting into an academic discussion of fluency, suffice it to say that it refers to the processes of cognition that allow you to manipulate language smoother, faster and more proficiently in real time.
Sometimes fluency is associated with automaticity, something like the autonomic functions of your heart beating and your breathing – you normally don’t think about those things to make them work. In fact, it is the opposite, when you think about those things, something is usually wrong. Similarly, if you have to think about speaking. Then it becomes slow and labored – something is usually wrong – your speech is not fluent. Fluent speech should be automatic, thus reducing cognitive overhead allowing you to use your limited cognitive capacity for other things. Native people usually don’t need to think about using language under normal conditions – it is automatic.
Training Fluency
How do you train fluency? Well, it involves your memory and repetition. You need to strengthen the neural connections in your brain to the point where you can start to use language automatically, more fluently. So, I wanted to make an app that helps students become more fluent with the English and create an app that helps learners use language they already know only faster and more fluently.
A second language learner has a passive knowledge of language, which means they know the meaning of words if they hear them but may not necessarily be able to produce that language on their own at a reasonable rate in real time. And that is the case with many Japanese students. Their passive knowledge is ok, but their productive ability is quite poor. How do you transform passive knowledge into productive useful language? Through practice and repetition, which strengthens your memory, recall ability and fluency.
Rapid Prototyping in LiveCode
So, I wanted to make an app that allows ESL learners to practice language to improve their fluency without it being boring and repetitious. It was important to improve their language skills without sacrificing user experience and engagement. The result was Chunky English v1.0 (1) and the initial response to the app is very positive. We are currently working on v2.0 but that’s a story for another day.
Chunky English started with rapid prototyping. We try to work on a one-week rapid prototype cycle. We brainstorm new ideas, tweek old ones, create content, record audio, program and add placeholder graphics into a working prototype. Then on Friday, we evaluate it and repeat the cycle. We came up with three different activities that use the same content: Chunky-Build a Sentence (Chunky), Standard fill-in-the-blank (FiB) and Comprehension Question (CompQ), which taken as a whole aims to create repetition for improving fluency and does so with fast paced, highly interactive game mechanics and task variety to maximize engagement. During the prototyping phase, the Chunky and CompQ mechanics took about 3 iterations each.
Chunky – Build a Sentence is the flagship game mechanic and it’s where the series gets its name. It is a combination of a dictation exercise and a rearrange the sentence test mashed together with multi-touch functionality. Rearrange the sentence doesn’t focus on word level like similar types of activities, but rather it hones in on prepositional phrases, noun phrases, verbal units or relative clauses etc.
We were only able to achieve this unique game mechanic because of the rapid prototyping that LiveCode allows. You have to remember that I am not a professional programmer; I am a university instructor and researcher. Programming in LiveCode is my passion and have to squeeze design into a very busy schedule. And yet, we were still able to get the app into stores in a very short amount of time. The rest of the team are also not professional designers. They mostly include SMEs (subject matter experts) and normal people – not programmers or app designers.
Creativity and LiveCode
You may have heard about CsÃkszentmihályi, (CHEEK-sent-mÉ™-HY-ee) and his flow theory – if not, then check out the Wikipedia article or his TED talk. I will try to tie this all into cognitive load theory and automaticity without making you fall asleep. What has all that got anything to do with LiveCode? Well lots. I may butcher theories a bit for brevity sake but here are the highlights.
First, let’s talk about Mastery. Becoming skillful at something requires you to develop your abilities to such a degree that you don’t have to think consciously about them – sounds like something we know, right? Fluency. People who have some mastery over a skill have automatized many of the fundamentals, which allows them to free up cognitive space for other things. The opposite is true if you are always consciously thinking about fundamentals. Your cognitive load is high and it is difficult to be creative because you have no cognitive capacity left-over. However, if you have automatized many of the basics, as well as some complex techniques to the point that they are second nature, then you will have some energy remaining for other higher-level functions.  As a result, you can begin to play and be creative with your skills, because you have that cognitive freedom. Essentially, you can begin to walk and chew gum at the same time because you don’t have to think about walking any more.
And that is what LiveCode gives us. Because LiveCode is relatively easy to use, has low cognitive overhead, and is very powerful, even non-programmers like myself are able to develop a high level of automaticity or fluency with the language, thus freeing up cognitive energy that can be used for other processes such as chewing gum or even being creative. And that is the space I find myself recently in when I program with LiveCode. I have a general idea of what I want to build but it is not set in stone. Then as I start to build a game mechanic, I start to get creative and tweek, modify, try different variations all very quickly and with great fluency – because I can keep the gestalt in mind without cognitive overload, so I am able to make discoveries in a dynamic, organic, fluent .
How do you know if you’re being creative or if you are in the zone or in a flow state? Well according to CsÃkszentmihályi several factors of flow are (1) a distortion of time, (2) intense focused concentration on the present moment, and (3) and merging of action and awareness. Have you ever started using LiveCode and then several hours later looked up at the clock and thought it only felt like a few minutes? It is sublime – maybe I’m getting carried away, but you get the point. I suppose that professional programmers can achieve this state using any programming language with enough practice and skill, but LiveCode has such a accessible bar of entry and is so powerful that it truly does allow you to go from paper napkin sketch to working prototype to polished app in a very short timeframe. And with low cognitive overhead, because of its near English like syntax, the programmer can easily fall into a programmers state of flow which… pause for effect… clears a space for Creativity.
The Future of Chunky English
We are only on our first completed version of the Chunky English Series. We currently have Chunky English: Vocab and Chunky English: Fluency and will soon be coming out with Chunky Kids, Chunky Business and Chunky TOIEC. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. We have so many more game mechanics slated that it will take us a few more years to get through them all. And we expect that as we go through that process, new ideas will bubble up.
For now we are in marketing mode and hope to tell the world about the power of LiveCode and how it helped birth the Chunky English Series at ShortSnap Learning.
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