Runesinger: A demonstration of coupling Korean phonics and spelling to a videogame

Runesinger is a demo of a PC videogame to practice speaking and spelling Korean. This computer-assisted language learning teaches a few meaningful nouns and verbs through the task of serving food to hungry villagers during the North Korean famine of 1997.;Inspired by melodic intonation therapy (MIT), the phrases are embedded in jingles. While the user listens and sings each note, a bouncing ball synchronizes the phonemes and graphemes. The user learns a subset of Hangul, the Korean alphabet, through a spelling puzzle. Subsequently, the user sings to same language subtitling (SLS).;The three-dimensional (3D) virtual environment, user interface, and story were designed explicitly for the phonetic spelling of the Korean language. Thus, Runesinger harnesses the tropes of videogames to practice a foreign language in a meaningful context.;KEYWORDS: computer-assisted language learning (CALL), Korean, serious game, same language subtitling (SLS), secondary language (L2), Hangul, task-based language teaching (TBLT), assessment-driven design, educational videogame, neural theory of language (NTL), edutainment, immersive language learning, restaurant script, playful learning.