- Apr 2024
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theconversation.com theconversation.com
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resource-scarce language
This app seems to focus on Grade 3 isiZulu and then english.
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apps.apple.com apps.apple.com
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The Mzanzi kids multilingual language learning App was created for children between the ages of 2-6 years in South Africa. It was designed to stimulate visual, speech and language literacy skills at an early age by understanding basic everyday concepts and highlighting the correct pronunciation of speech in six (6) different languages; English, Afrikaans, IsiXhosa, IsiZulu, Sepedi and Setswana. The integration of images and phonetics provides a good foundation for children to learn and speak in their mother tongue or home language with confidence and fluency, but most importantly comprehend and appreciate the diversity of languages used by South Africans. This multilingual App provides a good introduction before entering a schooling environment, and offers a non-threatening, playful and fun way of learning languages using innovative technology.
This is an app for multilingual language learning. Mine will focus on the mother tongue.
I tried it out for a bit and found the audio very repetitive, which could be problematic. Minecraft had such good audio - C14 or C11? It is fantastically immersive, and the popularity of the game and audio is irrefutable if you look at longevity (games come and go often, and very few manage to stick and have a continuous impact, Minecraft is a good example of an exception to this, alongside other well adjusted and designed games.
I had fun learning the clicks in isiXhoso - something I want to practice, but the audio became too much as i hit the image repeatedly.
There's room for more resources. This application does not speak to all children, and no one application ever will, hence the need for many across a broad range of cultures and diversities.
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