How interactive storytelling in a digital role-playing game can improve the learnability of Japanese Kanji

Abstract: This work explores the possibility of Interactive Storytelling being able to mediate meanings of Chinese Characters used in the Japanese language, or kanji, and successful learning foundations of kanji. A great inspiration for this work was Dr. James Heisig and his series of books “Remembering the Kanji”. The advanced learning principles he proposed were used as a foundation to create an interactive storytelling experience prototype to test if students were able to pick up on said learning strategies and also meanings of kanji. Furthermore, to ensure didactical correctness of the software teachers of Japanese and Japanese studies were asked as well to participate in the test phase with the request for didactic feedback. The obtained results showed that learnability was improved, speaking for the future prospects of this project.