Vocab Master wins Rep. Neal Dunn’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Florida’s Second District

When asked what inspired the creation of Vocab Master, the students said, ”We were inspired to create this app by the presence of immigrant individuals and mentally challenged individuals in our school. Many immigrants in our school came from Latin American countries, where English was not their first language. Thus, these students tended to understand what the objects represented but struggled to link it to the English word over that of their native tongues. There were students in our Spanish classes that struggled to speak basic English but excelled in speaking and writing Spanish. This showed to us that they understood the concept behind using language but struggled with shifting towards English over their native language.

We ourselves have experienced similar experiences within our group. When James and Heewon came to the United States, they both struggled to speak English when they first arrived. This is because the languages they had grown up using were Chinese and Korean, respectively. Although they understood what objects were, they struggled with relating it to the English word over Chinese or Korean. Seeing a similar issue within our school, we decided that we would create an app to help people to understand English better and be able to link commonly found words to the objects and ideas that they represented.

Furthermore, our app would have a similar effect within individuals that are mentally impaired. Oftentimes, students that have mental impairments or cognitive developmental delays do not have access to a curriculum that is crucial to their academic success. As such, this gap in content and education needs to be provided through auxiliary resources. We designed our app in hope for it to serve as a means to educate these mentally impaired students and enhance their progression, while also serving as a challenging and fun game. We aimed for our app to be able to address two major issues within our community and school and improve student’s understanding of English, particularly for aspiring-English speakers and young children with mental impairments. These issues and their commonalities inspired us to create an app that helped to educate its desired audience but was also fun to use. We decided to use a matching game since it appeals to young children and can prove to be a competitive and immersing game, while still educating the player and improving their English skills.”