Read the following text and do the tasks that follow.
Researchers in the United States and China are exploring how games on mobile phones can be used to teach children the Chinese language. The results may help promote the idea of mobile phones as learning devices, especially in rural areas of China.
Computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed two mobile learning games inspired by traditional Chinese games that emphasize cooperative playing, songs, and handmade objects. The Chinese language is more complex than most other languages because it uses 6,000 characters, each corresponding to a syllable or word. One game, Multimedia Word, has the player recognize and write a Chinese character correctly, based on hints such as a sketch or photo. A second game, Drumming Stroke, has a group of players practice writing Chinese characters in turns; participants must write one then pass the mobile phone to the next player within the beat of a drum stroke of the character in the correct order, and then pass the mobile phone to the next player within the beat of a drum.
Initially, the games were tested with children in Xin'an China. Later, the testing was done at a private school in Beijing. In both cases the games showed that students could improve their knowledge of Chinese characters.
"We believe that the cooperative learning encouraged by the games contributed to character learning," said Matthew Kam, assistant professor in Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science's Human-Computer Interaction Institute and project director. "The results of our studies suggest that further development of these games could make inexpensive mobile phones important learning tools, particularly for children in underdeveloped rural areas."
Despite their small screens and low computing power, Kam said, mobile phones could become a major educational resource as wireless carriers and mobile phone manufacturers extend sales into ever more rural areas of the globe.
Use of mobile phone-based games for teaching English literacy has also been investigated with rural children in India and Kenya.
4.1 Match the meanings in Column A with the correct words given in Column B. One word does not have a match.
| Column A | Column B |
|---|
| I. willing to help or do what people ask | A. complex |
| II. using radio, microwaves, etc. to transmit signals | B. cooperative |
| III. not costing a great deal | C. contribute |
| IV. help to cause or bring about | D. development |
| V. consisting of many different and connected parts | E. inexpensive |
| F. wireless |
4.2 Fill in the gaps with the correct information from the text.
I. The purpose of using mobile phones in the classroom in China is .......
II. In the first game, the player should recognise and write .......... correctly.
III. The games were tested in two cities named ...................
IV. Both games are believed to improve ..............
V. Matthew Kam works in ..............
4.3 Answer the following questions.
I. What motivated computer scientists to develop the games?
II. Why is Chinese language more difficult to learn?
III. Mention the names of the games the passage talks about.
IV. Which device do the players mainly use to play the second game?
V. What does the study show according to Matthew Kam?
