Kong, S.C., Ogata, H., Arnseth, H.C., Chan, C.K.K., Hirashima, T., Klett, F., Lee, J.H.M., Liu, C.C., Looi, C.K., Milrad, M., Mitrovic,
A., Nakabayashi, K., Wong, S.L., Yang, S.J.H. (eds.) (2009). Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computers in
Education [CDROM] . Hong Kong: Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education.
Mobile Phone-based Quiz System for
Learning Foreign Culture
Yoshiyuki TABATAa, Chengjiu YINa , Hiroaki OGATAb and Yoneo YANO
a
Research Institute for Information Technology, Kyushu University, Japan
b
Dept. of Information Science and Intelligent Systems, University of Tokushima, Japan
{tabata,yin}@cc.kyushu-u.ac.jp
Abstract: For the foreign language learning, it is important to understand the cultural
context in which the language is spoken. Understanding different cultures is indispensable
to learn foreign languages. It helps to generate interest in learning the language. We
propose a quiz system to help students to understand the foreign culture in a
mobile-learning environment. This is a mobile phone based system which supports the
students answering the questions about the foreign culture anywhere, anytime. Utilizing
this system, students can understand the culture of the target language. We present the
design and implement of the system.
Keywords: Language Learning, Mobile Learning, Foreign Cultures, Quiz
Introduction
Recently, with the evolution of improved wireless telecommunications capabilities, open
networks, increasing computing power, battery technology and the emergence of flexible
software architectures, these technologies can be commonly used in mobile learning [1].
Mobile technology is associated with any device that is designed to provide access to
information in any location. Specifically, this includes, but not limited to: wireless
notebooks, tablet computers, mobile phones and Personal Digital Assistants (PDA). One
important field where mobile technology can make significant contributions is education
[2].
Mobile technology can be used in language learning. There are many applications
for language learning with mobile devices. The most popular approaches to designing
mobile applications include standalone applications, web-based applications and email
applications. For example, a web-based application iTV (interactive television) has been
used to support second-language learning [3].
For the foreign language learning, it is important to understand foreign cultures
which include the actual conditions in the country. Culture is a much broader concept that
is inherently tied to many of the linguistic concepts taught in second language classes.
Understanding foreign cultures is indispensable to learn foreign languages. There are two
benefits of understanding foreign cultures:
1) Understanding foreign cultures helps students learn foreign languages. For
example, an American who is learning Chinese, once visited the house of a Chinese friend.
As the visitor saw the host’s wife, he said in Chinese, “Your wife is very beautiful.” The
host smiled and replied in Chinese, “ 哪里！哪里！ (Nali, Nali)”, which caused the
American’s surprise, he only knows the word “Nali” means “Where”, so he considered
that the host asked him “Which parts of the body are beautiful?” and answered: “Eyes,
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Kong, S.C., Ogata, H., Arnseth, H.C., Chan, C.K.K., Hirashima, T., Klett, F., Lee, J.H.M., Liu, C.C., Looi, C.K., Milrad, M., Mitrovic,
A., Nakabayashi, K., Wong, S.L., Yang, S.J.H. (eds.) (2009). Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computers in
Education [CDROM] . Hong Kong: Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education.
face and nose…”. Actually, in Chinese the word “Nali” is a kind of humble saying in this
situation. The misunderstanding was caused by different cultures.
2) Understanding foreign cultures increases the motivation to learn languages, for
example many people study Japanese because they like Japanese animation. By knowing
about a country's culture, people become interested in learning the language of this
country.
However, lots of Japanese students know almost nothing about other countries’ culture
except American, for example they know the name of the President of the United States,
but they don't know the name of the Chancellor of Germany.
We propose a quiz system to help students to understand foreign cultures in
mobile-learning environment, called it MOQULC (Mobile phone based Quiz system for
Learning foreign Cultures). Quizzes are made up of multiple-choice questions or
yes-no/true-false questions. As quiz questions are usually based on factual informations,
answers are either right or wrong. This form of testing is much simpler than testing
students' oral abilities or students' skills in written composition [4]. This form is very
suitable for mobile phones because the screen of a mobile phone is very small. Utilizing
this system to learn foreign cultures, teachers can grasp students' comprehension levels,
students can understand the culture of the target language, and the motivation can also be
increased.
The outline of this paper is as follows: First, we discuss the mobile learning. Then
we illustrate the definition and characteristics of MOQULC system. The implementation
of the system is presented afterword. Finally, the conclusion and the future work are
discussed.
1. Mobile Learning
The mobile learning environment changes the monotonous way of teaching in the
classroom whereby the students are only listeners. In traditional education, only one way
communication exists in face-to-face lectures. The teachers tend to teach unilaterally, it is
important to promote interactivities among students and between the teacher and students.
Traditional education is passive, lacks interaction and sometimes complicated contents are
hard to be taught and understood. Poor communication between students and the teacher is
one of the major problems in mass lectures. However, mobile devices can aid in reducing
this problem and improve interactive communication to help increase the motivation of the
students [5]. Many studies have examined the use of wireless mobile devices in learning.
According to [6], “90% of teachers in a study of 100 palm-equipped classrooms reported
that handheld was an effective instructional tools with the potential to impact student’s
learning positively across curricular topics and instructional activities.”
Roschelle classified classroom applications in four categories [1,7]: classroom
response systems, collaborative data gathering systems, participatory simulations systems
and other systems. MOQULC falls into a classroom response system. A classroom
response system can be defined as a tool that makes it possible for the teacher to obtain
responses from the students about surveys, polls or small tests. The system can collect the
students’ answers and, if applicable, create tables, histograms, or any other graphs,
supporting the teacher’s awareness about the students’ individual performance and general
misconceptions. Alone, it may sound like an uninteresting application, but it has obtained
many good results in practice, improving students’ participation and commitment in class
[8]. In particular, students in Japan are very quiet and passive in the classroom. Therefore,
response systems will be very helpful to increase students’ interactions [7].
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Kong, S.C., Ogata, H., Arnseth, H.C., Chan, C.K.K., Hirashima, T., Klett, F., Lee, J.H.M., Liu, C.C., Looi, C.K., Milrad, M., Mitrovic,
A., Nakabayashi, K., Wong, S.L., Yang, S.J.H. (eds.) (2009). Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computers in
Education [CDROM] . Hong Kong: Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education.
Our focus is primarily on learning the cultural context in which the language is
spoken. Making use of the MOQULC system, the students answer the questions of the
foreign culture anywhere, anytime with a mobile phone. The system collects the answers
of the students, and shows the total result on the tables or graphs. The teacher can be
aware of the students’ individual performance and general misconceptions, and grasp the
understanding level of each student on the course content.
2. The Characteristics of the System
There are many quiz systems, for example the system “quizken” (http://quizken.jp/), a
quiz site which include ten thousand questions or more in Japanese, but not for language
learning. To compare with the other systems, MOQULC has the characteristics as follows:
1. Understanding the foreign culture:
As motioned above, the aim of MOQULC is helping students to understand the foreign
culture, and then facilitate language learning. The content of the quizzes is different from
the other quiz systems. It is composed of geography, history, politics and culture, and
includes the content as follows:
1) The basic informations about the country.
2) The cultural difference between the learner’s mother tongue and the target
language.
3) A variety of social and cultural issues connected with the language.
2. Creating Quizzes by Students:
The students can not only answer the quizzes, but also create quiz questions. Students
create quizzes and save them in a text file, then send this file to the teacher. The teacher
checks the file and imports them to the system. Allowing students to create quizzes
themselves would give students the opportunity to have more authority over their own
learning (Iwasaki, 2008). “Quizzes (are) merely a way of getting students to add to their
repertoire of knowledge by forcing them to make new associations between the
information gained and the knowledge which they already possessed” [9]. The answers to
quiz questions are quick and easy to mark, and students may receive an immediate
feedback. The student-made quizzes can increase the motivation, and reduce the burden of
teachers.
3. Target user:
Now, our target user is university students. In the future, we can offer this system to
company employees as well, who spend much time on the train to their office and way
back home every morning and evening. Madoka (2003) reported, “If you walk around
nightlife districts of Tokyo or stand on the subway platform, you might be amazed to find
so many young people quietly watching the tiny monitor of their mobile phones,
conversations seem to be not the principal usage of mobile phone anymore by Japanese
youth. They chat with friends via e-mail, play games, look for nearby noodle restaurants
by accessing websites, take photos, or research the best way to make a train transfer
online. It has become a wireless information exchange in micro format anytime and
anywhere” [10]. Lots of the people use mobile phones for killing time. It will help people
to use time more effectively if they use a mobile phone for learning.
4. Quiz levels:
The quiz is classified into three levels based on their knowledge level. Level 1 is for the
students taking a beginner level course, the level 2 an intermediate level course and level 3
an advanced level course.
5. Feeling a sense of achievement:
The system shows students whether their answer was correct, and, if it was wrong,
shows them the correct answer. Students can challenge quiz questions as many times as
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Kong, S.C., Ogata, H., Arnseth, H.C., Chan, C.K.K., Hirashima, T., Klett, F., Lee, J.H.M., Liu, C.C., Looi, C.K., Milrad, M., Mitrovic,
A., Nakabayashi, K., Wong, S.L., Yang, S.J.H. (eds.) (2009). Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computers in
Education [CDROM] . Hong Kong: Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education.
they want, finally they will answer all questions correctly. This system will give students
the opportunity to feel a sense of achievement.
3. Implementation
This system can be accessed not only from PCs, but also from mobile devices such as a
mobile phone. We used wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11b), Tomcat 5.0 as the server on the
CentOS5.0 to develop the system. Database schema is designed and implemented using
PostgreSQL.
Utilizing the Struts framework, the system was developed as a web-based
application with JAVA. The Struts framework is a web-based application framework
which facilitates rapid application development, and it adopts MVC
(Model-View-Controller) design pattern as it naturally fits into the web architecture. We
chose this framework because of its reusability components and the previous experience in
developing web applications under this specification [1] .
The system has five interfaces: Login form, User registration form, Authority
management form, Teacher form and Student form.
3.1 Teacher form (Create quizzes)
“Teacher form” is the form for creating the quizzes. Teachers set up questions
in a text (.txt) file and import the file into the system. As every OS supports text
files, we do not need to install any other special softwares for inputting the
quizzes. This can reduce the burden of teachers. Figure 1 is an example of a quiz
file. The first line is the quiz title. The lines of the questions and answers are
repeated from the second line. The answer options are delimited by an asterisk,
and the correct answer should be written on the head.
After creating the quizzes, the teacher uses the “Teacher form” to import
the quizzes into the system. As shown in the figure 2, the teacher refers to the
quizzes file with "Reference" button, and saves the quizzes with “OK” button.
The teacher can also search and delete the quizzes in this window.
Figure 1. Inputting file.
Figure 2. Teacher form.
3.2 Student form (reply quizzes)
Students select a teacher and a quiz title (Figure 3), and then a quiz window will be shown
(Figure 4).
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Kong, S.C., Ogata, H., Arnseth, H.C., Chan, C.K.K., Hirashima, T., Klett, F., Lee, J.H.M., Liu, C.C., Looi, C.K., Milrad, M., Mitrovic,
A., Nakabayashi, K., Wong, S.L., Yang, S.J.H. (eds.) (2009). Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computers in
Education [CDROM] . Hong Kong: Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education.
Figure 3. Selecting quizzes.
Figure 4. Answering questions.
The questions will appear in a random order every time you load the quiz, and the choices
will appear also in a random order. In this way we can avoid the case that students
memorise the number of the correct answer.
Students can use the ten keys of the mobile phone to select the option. It is easier to
input the answers using the ten keys than using cursor keys. When the answer is inputted,
the correct answer and the (optional) explanation will be shown. The score and the corrct
answer rate are displayed when you quit the quiz.
4. Conclusion and future work
For the foreign language learning, it is important to understand the cultural context in
which the language is spoken. Understanding foreign cultures is indispensable to learn
foreign languages. It helps to generate interest in learning the language. In this paper, a
mobile phone based quiz system was described. Utilizing this system, students can
understand the culture of the target language.
In the future, we will evaluate this system and are planning to change the system to
a mail-based system.
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