Hadeda: the noisy way to practice spelling vocabulary using a cell phone

Abstract

With the push to better school results in mathematics, science, and technology related subjects, often language education is moved into the background. In Africa, however, education is often not in the mother tongue of the learners. Pupils are in a position where they are trying to learn complicated subjects such as science and mathematics in a language which is not their home language. In some African countries, there are dozens if not hundreds of languages. Hadeda is a project where primary school pupils (and even secondary school pupils) are encouraged to practice spelling words or vocabulary words using their cell phone. Hadeda allows the language teacher to create spelling lists or vocabulary lists in English and Afrikaans. Hadeda then generates a fun cell phone application using multiple texts-to- speech engines to encourage pupils to practice spelling the words