Mobile games help Chinese children read

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Mobile & Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies Project suggest that mobile phone-based games could provide a new way to teach a basic knowledge of Chinese language characters which might be particularly helpful in China’s underdeveloped rural areas.
Earlier this year, researchers reported that two mobile learning games, inspired by traditional Chinese games, showed promise during preliminary tests with children in Xin’an, an underdeveloped region in Henan province.
The researchers were from Carnegie Mellon, the University of California, Berkeley and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Carnegie Mellon University reported that subsequent studies this summer at a privately run school in Beijing likewise showed that students playing the educational videogames increased their knowledge of Chinese characters.