This reading reflection is about two articles published on Digital Culture and Education, one is “Learn English or Die: The effects of digital games on interaction and willingness to communicate in a foreign language” (Reinders & Wattana 2011), and the other is “Teaching and learning English through digital game projects” (deHaan, 2011).
Digital games are receiving increasing attention by researchers and practitioners of education and it is acknowledged that playing digital games motivates students’ learning and benefits the development of social skills. In the teaching and learning of foreign language, one of the major barriers is students’ shyness of using target language and the pressure of poor performance caused by low proficiency. Reinders and Wattana’s article introduces, based on the results of several studies, an important potential benefit of digital games for foreign language teaching and learning, that is students’ willingness to communicate. Through playing digital games with multiple players, the learners use foreign language to interact in a non-threatening environment.
As games are considered by learners as “fun” and engaging, they generally create low anxiety environments. Intergroup attitudes within gaming environments are based on expectations of constant interaction and the social situation is frequently one that is non-hierarchical and inclusive, and one in which the (second language) participant has a genuine desire to communicate. By lowering the affective barrier, the intention was to encourage students to relax and learn in a more natural way (Aoki 1999). And it is widely recognized that language learners who are more active with second language use have a greater potential to develop language proficiency as a result of having more opportunities to communicate with others. In this sense, willingness to communicate while playing digital games is a crucial factor in ultimate proficiency levels in second language production.
Some (Arnseth, 2001; Squire, 2002) have argued that the power of games for educational purposes may not reside in the games themselves (i.e. a language student trying to learn the second language from a digital game), but rather in the context and activities related to and extending from play.
That leads me further to read deHann’s article, in which two digital game projects have been introduced as extracurricular activities, game design and game magazine creation, during which students have gained a deeper understanding of games, game-related media, and creative technologies alongside their acquisition of various aspects of the English language. Students are guided towards a better understanding of games’ formal features and technologies through their active creation of games and game-related media, and as a result, students learned and practiced a variety of language and technology skills with the design projects. The projects motivated the students, challenged the students, and provided many opportunities for authentic discussions in the foreign language, and eventually, improve their spoken and written English language skills.
Both these two articles agree that the more use of the second language, the more likely that second language proficiency will develop. However, evidence of language learning outcomes from the use of digital games is somewhat mixed. Some researchers hold that proficiency does not necessarily extend to grammatical accuracy or native-like language use. In one of their studies, deHann, Reed and Kuwada (2010) compared 40 players and 40 watchers of an English-language rhythm game. Both the players and the watchers recalled second language vocabulary; however, the players recalled significantly less vocabulary. The digital games’ interactivity seemed to have prevented the players from noticing and recalling vocabulary.
Still, there is a clearer tendency in foreign language teaching and learning, that is, to move the students’ attention away from acquiring language structure, such as vocabulary and grammar, and put the language application back to its contexts and communicative meaning.
In China, learning English is all people’s life-long endeavor. Their No. 1 purpose may still be pursuing high scores in all kinds of exams such as TOEFL, GRE, ILETS for study-abroad, CELT 4, 6 and 8 for college graduation, or exams for career interviews and professional evaluation, or final exams at school etc. However, speaking freely and fluently in English is becoming more desired expectation in ESL learning. It might be hard for people in US to imagine how much energy and time these students are putting into learning English, esp. speaking in English. To give a rough idea, if a student learns 6 classes in a semester, the time and energy they put into English might be the sum of the other five classes. However, the proficiency and performance of these students’ English communication is more often low. Therefore, practitioners of English teaching and learning in China are looking at even younger group of learners. In my days, we started to learn English from Junior high school, but now English class is started from elementary schools, and many families push it even earlier by arranging English learning together with to learn mother tongue.
Along with the booming the beginner programs for kids English comes the change of teaching styles and contents. How to make the learning interesting, engaging, motivating to these young learners becomes the priority consideration for these English programs. Therefore, game play, game-based learning and gamification become the major trend in the design of ESL teaching and learning processes.
I remember in the discussion about the differences among game, game-based learning and gamification. Prof. Susan Law explained in class canvas as follows,
A game involves play. That said, if I tear pages of a notebook off one-by-one, crumple them up in my hands, and toss them across the room into a wastepaper basket repeatedly, I’m playing a game. If I make it a competition with my roommate and keep track of how many times we both sink or miss, that’s also a game. The goal of a game is usually for fun, but as we have discussed so far, we play games for all sorts of reasons: social interaction (poker night with friends, Foursquare, Marco Polo), relaxation & escape (mobile phone games), tuning out (VR headset games), family time (board games), individual competitive pursuits (video games on Twitch) and many other examples…most of these reasons have little to do with formal learning or schooling.
Game-based learning refers to games that have specific learning objectives and are initiated by educators in various contexts. For example, having my high school French students play “Who’s Who?” to practice French vocabulary, playing “Jeopardy” to review for a history exam, video games to practice math skills, but also role playing and putting oneself into another character in order to enact a scenario of what is being studied. When playing a game is a lesson plan in itself where students are accountable for specific learning outcomes, that is game-based learning. It is intentional and it is designed to achieve a measurable goal.
Gamification: when game-like elements (avatars, badges, rewards, levels, storylines, leaderboards, scenarios…) are applied to an experience that isn’t normally a game, that’s the gamification of everyday life, or online dating, or fitness, etc. Here’s an example with Duolingo. (https://youtu.be/_oFHbBSZe1A)
When I was looking into different programs existing, such as VIP English, BuzzKids English (a one-on-one conversation partner program), 51Talk (In Chinese pronunciation it sounds more like “I wanna talk”), Zebra English, etc., I think since they all have clear learning objectives, they should all belong to game-based learning. Or because these are all designed for younger kids and they use a lot of game-like elements in the teaching and learning process, should they be the examples of gamification, if Duolingo is an example of gamification?
Looking back at one of my own experiences, I am wondering what our experience should belong to.
When I was working at Office of International Student Services of a university, we created a partnership program called CHATS (Conversation Helping and Teaching Students). We paired one international student and one US domestic student to establish partnership who would meet regularly (weekly) and do things together as they like, such as work on schoolwork, go to visit museum, go out for photographic assignment, and then all partners met once a month to play some group games, such as Jenga, Two Truths and One Lie, musical chair, name games, scavenger hunt. The whole program aimed at creating contexts and activities so that participants could meet and chat without really paying attention to language learning itself. However, the purpose of this CHATS program is to help international students meet and chat with friends and improve spoken English.
Connecting this experience with the two extracurricular game projects in deHann’s article, I can see the similar learning process and learning goals. Is it actually a game play, because participants are paying attention to communication rather than language, (while language happens to act as the communication tool,) though the outcome of this communication is better English for international students?
References:
deHaan, J. (2011). Teaching and learning English through digital game projects. Digital Culture & Education, 3:1, 46-55. URL: http://www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/dce1046_dehaan_2011.pdf
Reinders, H., & Wattana, S. (2011). Learn English or Die: The effects of digital games on interaction and willingness to communicate in a foreign language. Digital Culture & Education, 3:1, 3-29. URL: http://www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/dce1049_reinders_2011.pdf
Design Just For You 