IPAcman – or how to gamify introductory phonetics and phonology education

Abstract

The article introduces a new educational browser-based game named IPAcman. The game is a didactic tool which can be used in introductory courses on English phonetics and phonology and teaches the description of conservative RP phonemes with the proper linguistic terminology, pertaining to places of articulation, manners of articulation, and voicing (in consonants) or vowel height, backness and roundedness. A short survey performed on three groups of students who were taught with IPAcman reveals that the attitudes towards the use of computer games in university coursework are overwhelmingly positive and that learning through playing a computer game is judged to be both enjoyable and highly effective.