Students of all ages and across all disciplines at university often have gaps in their knowledge when it comes to using punctuation and grammar correctly. To help young and adult learners improve their writing skills, Dr Shamus Smith and Dr Erica Southgate of the University of Newcastle, Australi (UON), with Liz Stephens, Ross Billie and Daniel Hickmott, have developed a couple of fun, 2D apps to engage learners in a convenient way.
Apostrophe Power, a game requiring students to help a mouse wearing a jet pack jump across a series of sea stacks and reach a block of cheese, solidifies students’ knowledge of correct apostrophe usage in four scenarios – possession/ownership, contractions, misfits and combinations.
Sentence Hero has similarly been designed in a playful way, enabling students to work their way through different types of punctuation – full stops, commas, colons and semicolons – and helping them identify run-on sentences and sentence fragments.
Funded by the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education and the 2014 Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Programme (HEPPP) National Priorities Pool, Apostrophe Power and Sentence Hero are available for download via the iTunes store. The apps are compatible with iPhones, iPads, and the iPod touch, using iOS 7.0 or later, and can be integrated into tertiary preparation and undergraduate courses.
