The UOC creates an app for learning English, French and German in trivial pursuit format

The UOC Centre for Modern Languages has created an app, Trivialang, for studying and improving English, French and German language skills in a fun way. It works very simply: each player has to answer multiple-choice questions for which only one of the four possible answers is correct. The app can be downloaded by anyone free of charge via both iOS and Android operating systems. With this launch, the UOC aims to offer university students different learning resources.

Trivialang has over 15,000 questions – 5,000 for each language – more than 1,000 of which include images and audio. The questions have been prepared by the professors of the Centre for Modern Languages and combine four areas: grammar, vocabulary, communication and culture. "Trivialang allows people to play, practice and learn outside the classroom. All they need is a mobile phone", explains the director of the Centre, Joseph Hopkins.

How is it played?

The user can play alone, choose an opponent selected randomly by the app, or challenge a friend. There are two game modes: the combo, where players have to answer seven consecutive questions, or against the clock, where players have to answer as many questions as they can correctly in one minute.

The game has ten levels of difficulty, which players can reach by accumulating points. Once the game is over, the student is given a diagnosis of their level of knowledge and they can see where they are in the ranking of all the app's players. The 10 levels of difficulty are aspiring, novice, amateur, apt, competent, able, expert, professor, master and doctor.

Users can access the app via their Facebook or Google account or, if they are UOC students, using their University user ID. The link for downloading Trivialang for Android is https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trivialang&hl=ca and the link for iOS is https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/trivialang/id1157929904?mt=8.

Over 3,500 downloads of Quadrivia

This is the second app the UOC has made available to students this academic year. The first was Quadrivia. It is a pioneering trivial pursuit game in the educational sphere that allows students to review the content of their degree course while playing. Until now the app structured the questions around 16 studies, but from this spring it can be played by course, 225 in total.

In three months, Quadrivia has been downloaded 3,673 times, 2,025 via Android and the remaining 1,648 via iOS. The majority of users are from Spain, although it has also been downloaded from Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan.