View Content #24898

By Lindsay Marean, CASLS InterCom Editor, and Stephanie Knight, CASLS Assistant Director

All too often, formal instruction is driven by the desires and frameworks of an external source in a relative position of power to the learners themselves. This tendency yields a situation in which each learner’s wants, needs, and abilities to create unique and diverse situated meanings that are derived from their personal contexts and experiences are undervalued or even ignored. Gameplay in formal and extramural contexts provides a unique answer to this situation, as the case study of Edmond below will illuminate.

Edmond, a Mainland Chinese student at an English-medium school in Hong Kong, wanted to play sports with the international students in his residence hall, but he wasn’t confident about his accent and conversation strategies. A friend recommended that he play sports video games to learn language specific to playing basketball. During play, he often paused the game to write down key phrases and repeat them.

The above case study, from Chik’s 2014 study on digital gaming and language learning in East Asia, exemplifies several key aspects of learner-directed language learning that can happen through game play.

• Low-risk practice: Games allow for failure and re-starts. Players can try out different personas and strategies and see what works best without worrying about offending a real person.
• Supportive environments: In-game conversations (as in live chat or audio during multi-player online games) and discussions about games (in online forums dedicated to particular games) are generally supportive, given that all participants have a common interest (Thorne and Black, 2007; Thorne et al., 2009).
• Complex interactions: Even in single-player games, commercial developers carefully build in complexity that is difficult to replicate in classroom interactions (Sykes et al., 2008; Thorne et al., 2009). When you consider live chat and audio in multiplayer games and discussions in online forums, the potential for authentic language interactions grows tremendously. At the same time, a shared context facilitates understanding beyond a learner’s current proficiency level.
• Global competencies: Shapiro (2018) notes that his children are aware of time zones around the world because they determine when their friends will be awake and available to play online games with them. This “macro-mindedness” reinforces global competencies.

Essential to all of these benefits, learners choose whether to play, what to play, how to play (their goals in the game), and with whom and how much. Next time a student wonders how he or she can improve proficiency outside of class, consider recommending game play in the target language, or seeking out target language forums about a game he or she already plays.

References:

Chik, A. (2014). Digital gaming and language learning: Autonomy and community. Language Learning & Technology, 18(2), 85-100.

Shapiro, J. (2018). Digital play for global citizens. New York: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. Retrieved from http://joanganzcooneycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/jgcc_digitalplayforglobalcitizens.pdf.

Sykes, J., Oskoz, A., & Thorne, S. L. (2008). Web 2.0, synthetic immersive environments, and mobile resources for language education. CALICO Journal, 25(3), 528-546.

Thorne, S. L. & Black, R. W. (2007). New media literacies, online gaming, and language education. (CALPER Working Paper Series, No. 8). The Pennsylvania State University: Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research.

Thorne, S. L., Black, R. W., & Sykes, J. (2009). Second language use, socialization, and learning in Internet communities and online games. Modern Language Journal, 93, 802–821.