#willingnesstocommunicate

[gamesandpragmatics]

We have chosen to construct our Activity 2 around the puzzle game ilomilo (discussed below) in order to demonstrate a communicative activity using digital games designed to encourage engagement in student players and observers.  This lesson practices polite requests and giving directions, as well as asks students to notice, measure, and identify polite behaviors.  To access this file, navigate to the LT610 Win 2015 folder on this page, and click the file link.

[gamesandpragmatics]

ilomilo Achievement List

ilomilo has 15 achievements worth 250 points. Using this list, students can work with a partner to either create a written strategy to complete all of the achievements, or devise a script for verbal coaching of players attempting to reach these achievements.  Students should compile what vocabulary they will need, time required, and how to identify and use any special blocks or items in order to get reach the achievements.  Alternatively, students could create narrated game play videos using Twitch which addresses these elements.  Like the previous activities, this activity (particularly the Twitch videos variant) helps move learners into affinity spaces for the games where players communicate on topics around the game using English.  By raising their player profile through the collection of Achievements, learners gain status and prestige in these communities.

[gamesandpragmatics]

Using a 3D online game to assess students’ foreign language acquisition and communicative competence

This study focuses on generating empirical evidence of the educational potential of digital games, and investigates how participation in online games impacts students’ interactive and communicative competencies in the L2, which factors influence these competencies and their expressions in communication with other players, and whether gaming affects accuracy and fluency in the target language.  In a departure from previous studies investigated for his collection, the study’s authors have chosen not to use virtual worlds or MMORPGs in order to have more input in task design and ease of play.  The authors justified this choice by identifying the learners in the study as CEFR level A1 users (denoting low-beginner level students), resulting in a need for more controlled activities.

The instructors used cooperative learning framework to design the course and game, which grouped the students into teams.  Students were Spanish speaking learners of German, and the tasks were built around directional instructions requiring the use of specific preposition forms and use of the dative or accusative case.  To employ these forms, students played multiple levels of a game in which scaffolded tasks: level one was a matching activity, and level two was an info gap activity which prompted cooperative play by giving one student control of the controller, and another student control of a view of the room layout needed to complete the task.  Students then must work together to rearrange the objects in the room to match the view provided. This cooperation was facilitated by text-based chat.

For the study, the authors selected twelve students from this group (six most active, and six less active in gameplay) and organized them into teams.  They grouped the students according to their activity levels within the game and demonstrated WTC in in-class interactions, and analyzed their in-game interactions via transcripts of their chat logs.  The authors also gave students a pre- and post-test in order to determine impact on communicative competence.  When analyzed, the texts showed reduced accuracy, but increased use of the target language to communicate, particularly on the part of students previously identified as having low WTC. The authors posit that WTC may not necessarily relate to accuracy.  Because the sample size is so low, the authors suggest further research is necessary in order to replicate the results.

Berns, A., Palomo-Duarte, M., Dodero, J. M., & Valero-Franco, C. (2013). Using a 3D online game to assess students’ foreign language acquisition and communicative competence. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 8095, 19-31.

[gamesandpragmatics]

Other-Repetition as a Resource for Participation in the Activity of Playing a Video Game

This article describes a research study on social interaction during the activity of playing a video game.  The authors use Conversation Analysis to discuss the foreign language learning opportunities afforded participants during gameplay. Their focus is on player and observer repetition of language uttered by gamer avatars during in-game play, and manipulation of these utterances. The authors analyze how repetition of these prosodic elements can increase their speaking competency and engagement of the players in the target language. They examine repetition and imitation, anticipatory use, and expansion on the utterances during multiplayer gaming and find that these are recurrent practices within gaming and create opportunities for creating shared understanding within the activity. The article relates to WTC since repetition and the acquisition of linguistic chunks are precursory steps for speaking fluency, and through mimicry, the players become more comfortable with these chunks and willing to use them. While this article discusses second language acquisition in gameplay, it only focuses on interactions of adolescent male gamers sharing a first language, and only in the context of one game: Final Fantasy X. This does, however, incidentally offer insight into what kinds of games, in this case role-playing and dialog-heavy, would be most beneficial for learners to play in order to gain these skills. These limitations in scope notwithstanding, the article introduces strong evidence of development of communicative elements via game interactions, though not through online interactions. Instead these players interact in real time in proximity to each other (seated on a couch). This research demonstrates that players do not have to be interacting within the game to benefit from gaming environments, but that playing with the language around the games can also promote beneficial results.

Piirinen-Marsh, A., & Tainio, L. (2009). Other-Repetition as a Resource for Participation in the Activity of Playing a Video Game. Modern Language Journal, 93(2), 159-169. http//dx.doi.org/ 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2009.00853.x.

[gamesandpragmatics]

Talk to me! Games and students' willingness to communicate

In this study, the authors modified a popular online game, Ragnarok Online, for Thai university students learning English.  The gained permission from the game distributors to host the Thai version of the game on private university servers, as well as to add new content in the form of task-based quests in English.  The participants were 16 fourth-year IT students pursing their undergraduate studies.  They were all previous players of MMORPGs, and had beginning to intermediate levels of English ability.  The students had no other English instruction or contact concurrently outside of the study.    The authors chose to modify the game quests because the original ones were too long to fit within the course time, and in order to insert content that was both at the appropriate level for the students and meaningful to their current course of study.  This modification allowed the researches to align the course content with the game content.  The tasks increased in complexity and difficulty as students progressed through the game.  Forty minutes was allowed for gameplay, with the remaining fifty minutes of course time devoted to preparation prior to the quest, and a completing a WTC questionnaire and group debriefing afterwards.  Students were instructed to focus on collaboration, rather than competition, and were divided into two groups, assigned to communicate synchronously either via voice, or via text-based chat.  Students were recorded using Skype Chat or Skype Call Recording, and their utterances transcribed and analyzed using discourse and interaction analysis.  The authors also analyzed their WTC questionnaire data for evidence of WTC.

The study showed a pattern of increased turns in students’ interactions as the students progressed through the study.  This was compared favorably against observations of students’ communicative behavior during face-to-face interaction.  This was somewhat problematic because the authors did not provide a rigorous assessment of the participants’ behavior for comparison, so an accurate measure of the gameplays’ impact is lacking.  There was also no control group used, so it is unknown if participants’ WTC would have increased in a non-game-based control activity in equal measure.  Participants produced a large quantity of language and a variety of discourse functions (clarification requests, confirmation checks, questions, etc.) during gameplay, but the authors note that this did not result in more accuracy or complexity in learner’s utterances.  The authors also noted the use of reduced registers for students, including leetspeak based utterances.  This piece was most intriguing as it could represent the learners’ embrace of a gaming discourse community and movement towards participation in these affinity spaces.  The authors also noted that this demonstrated increased processing and understanding of input as evidenced by the reduced or modified linguistic forms. Most students reported gains in WTC as a result of gameplay, though a few reported that the increased cognitive load from playing the games resulted in less focus on producing language.  This could be a problem if students are not yet used to gameplay mechanics, or do not have previous experience in gaming.

Reinders, H., & Wattana, S. (2012). Talk to me! Games and students' willingness to communicate. Digital games in language learning and teaching, (156-188).  New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.  (physical copy available)

[gamesandpragmatics]

Using ubiquitous games in an English listening and speaking course: Impact on learning outcomes and motivations

This article discusses a study of two groups of 7th grade students in Taiwan that were participants in an 8-week research study examining whether motivation increased with the use of a ubiquitous mobile gaming curriculum, as compared to a control group using traditional media (CDs and printed materials).  The study authors applied constructivism and motivation theories to the course design, and sought to make the materials for this course conform to Keller's attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction (ARCS) motivation model (Keller, 1987, and Keller & Suzuki, 2004) to design a course to draw students' attention, relate it to their own lives and actions, to build confidence through the accomplishment of tasks, and to increase satisfaction by doing so.  The designers drew upon task and game-based learning (GBL) to accomplish these ends, citing studies showing greater learner engagement and motivation with GBL (Schwabe and Göth, 2005 and Lepper et al., 2005), and task-centered learning leading to more meaningful engagement with the materials and increased student satisfaction (Ushioda, 1996. & Willis, 1996). 

This study relates to our area of research in that the study showed that the experimental group consistently outperformed the control group by a statistically significant margin in all areas.  Students reported greater interest in the learning materials as presented via the ubiquitous learning (UL) environment (though no increased interest in the content was expressed by one group over another), greater enjoyment of the curriculum in the UL format, and less anxiety in interacting with the virtual tutor than in a classroom environment.  The students’ enjoyment of the virtual tutor interactions demonstrates a need for sheltered practice in a low-stakes environment.  While there are some flaws in the virtual tutor model, in that students don’t receive correction, miss out on the opportunity to see the nuances of human interaction in the target language, and (in the sample listed at least) are exposed to pragmatically flawed dialog, having an interactive model does help keep student affect lower than in the classroom.  Whether this is worth sacrificing person-to-person interaction is not yet clear.

Liu, T., & Chu, Y. (2010). Using ubiquitous games in an English listening and speaking course: Impact on learning outcomes and motivation. Computers & Education, 55(2), 630-643. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2010.02.023. Available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131510000667

[gamesandpragmatics]

Using Digital Board Games for Genuine Communication in EFL Classrooms

This peer-reviewed article conducted a study which tested whether students exposed to practice through gaming in a relevant context improved their communicative skills and intrinsic motivation with positive results. The study showed that those who played the digital board game were more communicatively competent than the other groups. In the article, there is a good portion designated to the literature review, which goes into detail about how others have succeeded in integrating board games into their classes. It also explains how specific board games have been used for pedagogical purposes as well (Bolides for physics, Monopoly for financial accounting). This source is excellent not only because it elaborates on how board/card games have been used in classroom environments, but also because it is so recent. This field of study is growing and there is more evidence proving the usefulness of using gaming and pragmatics.

Wu, C., Chen, G., & Huang, C. (2014). Using Digital Board Games for Genuine Communication in EFL Classrooms. Educational Technology, Research and Development, 62(2), 209-226.

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