“Playing With Words”: Effects of an Anagram Solving Game-Like Application for Primary Education Students

Abstract

The present study reports the basic characteristics of a game-like application entitled "Playing with WordsPwW". PwW is a single-user application where a word must be guessed given an anagram of that word. Anagrams are presented from a predefined word list and users can repeatedly try to guess the word, from which the anagram is derived, by placing (drag & drop) successively the given letters into the correct orthotactic order. Each effort is assessed as either correct or incorrect, while reaction and total time consumed are also recorded. The purpose of this game is both to entertain the user and to provide teachers with a simple computerized assessment tool. Summative evaluation results, based on 76 primary schoolchildren sample, indicate that the performance of anagram solving tasks explain a significant proportion of variance in reading fluency.

Linguistic Effects on Anagram Solution: The Case of a Transparent Language

“…In a previous study in the Greek language, reading fluency was found to share strong correlation to performance on anagram solving tasks (Panagiotakopoulos & Sarris, 2013). Following up on this issue, we examined the association between reading fluency and the linguistic factors of syllabic structure and graphemic frequency by comparing the number of moves required to solve the anagrams.…”

“…As Henin and his collaborators (2009, p. 906) argue, anagram solution is "… an extension of natural word-reading ability, which is highly sensitive to structural knowledge of the language and is generally agreed to involve parallel processing in skilled readers". In a recent study (Panagiotakopoulos & Sarris, 2013), performance on anagram solving tasks was found to share significant correlation to reading fluency measures. In fact, children's performance on anagram solution tasks explained 30% of the variance in reading fluency.…”

“…The application can be configured to provide help to the user when either the first letter of the correct word, or the last, or even both of them appear. In addition, the application can be configured to provide feedback to the user with sound, animation, and written messages, after the completion of each try (Panagiotakopoulos & Sarris, 2013).…”

“…The participants' mean age during testing was 11.61 years. Participants were categorized into two reading fluency groups (see Panagiotakopoulos & Sarris, 2013).…”

Backtracking and k-Nearest Neighbour for Non-Player Character to Balance Opponent in a Turn-Based Role Playing Game of Anagram

“…An anagram is a game that forms a word by rearranging the letters of another word [1]. The main purpose of anagrams is to form correct words according to the spelling system of a language [2]. One of the innovations that have been developed in anagram games is the gameplay, where players must be able to compose anagram and sub-anagram words to attack enemies [3].…”