The Korean Government Now Supports Online Games

Recently the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism recently announced a push for educational games to become a part of the official curriculum in Korean schools. After tests that were administered from 2005 to 2008 in multiple grammar schools and high schools, playing online games was found to significantly raise students’ test scores. In fact, the average score of students on an English vocabulary test doubled, from 41.1 to 80.1 points, after playing educational internet games.

Cultivate the market for functional, educational games and to raise awareness of them. The ministry of Science and Technology has decided hereafter to change the negative recognition that games receive and contribute to the creation of a market for them.

A copy of the article with the original report in Korean can be found here.

NHN has announced the results of the CBT

On Monday, February 2nd, NHN announced the results of Hanjamaru’s closed beta test. In total, 26,000 people tested the game and were exposed to an average of 13 Chinese characters in the span of an hour. According to the results shown through administering one test before playing the game and one test afterwards, game players can naturally become familiar with these 13 Chinese characters. Vast improvement was especially apparent for those testers under 10 years old.

Before the test, in the second half of last year, 6th grade students were tested at Seoul National University's psychology department’s language and thought laboratory in order to ascertain the effectiveness of the game as a learning tool for characters.

During the testing period, as users played the game, at the time when monsters attacked, the sound of the Chinese characters was heard repeatedly and the effect that the size of the monsters and the effect that the style of their attack had upon the subject’s gaze was measured to test for learning and recognition.

Among the elementary school students that were tested it was found that during the period when monsters attacked, the children’s vision focused mainly upon the Chinese characters and they were listening to the sound of the characters. According to the analysis of the educational effectiveness of the game, in terms of auditory and visual senses, a sort of Pavlovian condition is created in Hanjamaru as the shape of the Chinese characters and the sound of them are combined and associated together by the users.

Furthermore, the Chinese character’s appearance and Korean pronunciation for every vocabulary word are simply combined for the user. In order to acquire weapons, the composition of different elements of the characters is broken down and the player must construct them in order to understand the principles and process of character formation. As a result, the game attains good educational results.

During this round of testing, one 3rd grade student, Minseo Lee, said, “Every time I grab a fat monster with a Chinese character on its body, the character’s sound is played and I feel like I’ve learned the character. While I play the game, my parents praise me so that I feel really good”.

Suyun Gwan (43, white collar worker), a parent that played Hanjamaru with her children during the test, said that, ”Through the game, interest is held and through repetitive learning educational results arise that aren’t those of a craming session, but that are natural. Since the children are able to happily and voluntarily study Chinese characters, I’m excited for this new educational method.”

The original article can be seen in korean: here.