Kes Sesi: A mobile game designed to improve kindergarteners' recognition of letter sounds

Abstract

Learning letters is an important area of language learning, conducive to the beginning of reading and writing. Indeed, today's generation prefers to learn through digital games rather than through formal teaching processes. Inspired by this need, the researcher designed this study (a) to test the effectiveness of an instructional digital game, Kes Sesi, designed to teach letter recognition skills and (b) to briefly present its instructional development process, which was based on the ADDIE model. This was a quasi-experimental study with two treatment groups and a control group involving 87 kindergarteners. Treatment groups played the game for 12–6 weeks for learning, 6 weeks for practice. The control group continued with its regular class activities. One treatment group played the game based on predefined sound categorization, the other without any categorization. A test on children's sound recognition abilities was administered three times as a pretest, a midtest, and a posttest. The treatment groups performed significantly better than the control group. The game enhanced the kindergarteners' ability to practice uncategorized content while it enhanced their ability to learn categorized content. The results are promising in that Kes Sesi can be useful in self-supported learning contexts with little adult input and with minimum outside interference. © 2019 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.