A Game Palette and Guidelines for Game Development for Minority Languages – Case Karelian Language

Abstract

Games can enhance language learning. Especially vocabulary learning can be targeted with simple games, that are affective and affordable to create. Opportunities are scarce for learning a minority language as a second language; however, teaching can be augmented with distance learning provided by learning games. One game or a narrow selection of games can provide an over simplistic base vocabulary that does not fully reflect the richness of the underlying culture. In this paper we present a palette of simple vocabulary games, that have been designed and implemented to teach Karelian language to native Finnish speakers. As a solution for teaching vocabulary for non- native speakers we propose guidelines creating a selection of variable and accessible language games in situations where accessibility to guided learning is low and unintentional learning using existing games is not possible.