Syntax Tutor

Syntax Tutor is a game to help students recognize incorrect syntax and practice writing code in correct syntax.

Game Flow

1. The user is shown a piece of code, and the user is asked, “Is this correct syntax?”
2. The user has two actions, they can either press the “Yes” or the “No” button.
   • If the code is correct, and the user says that the code is correct, they get points.
   • If the code is correct, and the user says that the code is incorrect, they get deducted points, and have to retry the problem with the same code.
   • If the code is incorrect, and the user says that the code is correct, they get deducted points, and have to retry the problem with the same code.
   • If the code is incorrect, and the user says that the code is incorrect, a code editor appears, and they must fix the syntax of the code to make it correct.
     • If the code they enter is correct, they get awarded points for solving the problem.
     • If the code they enter is incorrect, they get deducted points and have to continue to try editing the same code until it is correct.
3. This process repeats infinitely and a running total of the score is kept.

In this way, the student practices recognizing incorrect syntax, but also practices writing correct syntax as well.

If the user only wants/needs to practice a particular skill, there is a series of checkboxes in the footer that allows the user to toggle certain problem types.

This game is intended to be used as a way to transition between a block-based and a text-based language to facilitate typing practice. It can also be used for targeted practice to train syntax rules into a student’s muscle memory.

As of right now, the proof of concept (PoC) only supports JavaScript syntax, but it could be easily extended for a variety of languages. Any other languages (with the exception of Python because of Skulpt) would need the parse the syntax tree in order to check syntax correctness. This PoC uses the easy way out and executes user-entered JavaScript to check if it runs without errors to check user-entered code correctness.