Thesis Research: Foreign Language Learning & Video Games

[Loryne]

Hey BG!

I'm currently working on my Master's Degree in French and as part of my thesis, I'm examining the use of video games in the teaching of foreign languages. I actually just won a grant to design some new course components for elementary-level language classes and given that we are being forced to hybridize our courses (i.e. one day a week will be online), I thought that this might be a path worth pursuing.

This is where you guys come in. In addition to our own students, I would also like the opinions of avid gamers. So, if you could, please take 5-7 minutes of your time and check out a survey I put together.

This has the potential to directly affect university courses, so even though this may not be your school, it could be eventually. Thus your input and feedback are invaluable and I thank you in advance for your participation.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XJFRF9M

Si vous préféreriez répondre à ce sondage en français, veuillez cliquer ici:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XQKXX95

Loryne

[Kuya]

Like the survey; short and to the point, and it even had a consent form at the begining.

[Lhyet]

As someone who's trying to learn Spanish, I've tried using a few games on the DS with lacklustre results, but I think it's got a possibility to be a big help if it's developed right.

One little problem with the survey; at the end when it asks your country, I entered United Kingdom into the Others field but it wouldn't let me finish unless I selected either France or the US.

[Loryne]

One little problem with the survey; at the end when it asks your country, I entered United Kingdom into the Others field but it wouldn't let me finish unless I selected either France or the US.

Thanks for the heads up. I just checked and SurveyMonkey somehow messed up the logic on that question. It should be fixed now.

[Obev]

Responded.

Don't really think vidya games are useful for language learning, since so much of language learning takes place in your mouth, or at least between your brain and your voicebox. Unless you have a speech recognition software thing, any game is going to focus exclusively on either receptive skills (which is fine, but not the whole picture) or on written output (which is once again not the most important bit of language learning).

I should note that I'm a language teacher, and really think it's necessary for students to verbally use the target language in order for it to stick. They can do grammar exercises 'til the cow comes home, but have them use their language in a constructed scenario and they'll go home far better.

[Telamond]

Responded to the survey.

A friend of mine learned english from playing FFVII (he was spanish), of course his vocabulary was skewed towards one set of words, but it didn't matter inside FFXI.

[Cantih]

This is entirely anecdotal.

I'm a US FFXI player that has been with a big-ish pan-EU LS for many years now (timezone for events was more the concern than language).
And only a handful have been in that entire time, others come and go after a few years, so most of the next statement is based on people who have a smaller amount of time they were known.

But I never saw anyone improve their English while a member, their capability was static as long as I knew them.

[Loryne]

Thanks for your input. I greatly appreciate it!

I don't want to do to much talking, mainly because I want to hear what you have to say, but also because I don't want to influence responses either way. I will say this, however: Most of the points raised here and in the comments portion of the survey are being addressed in my thesis in some form or fashion.

I attended GDC last week and attempted to discuss this very topic with people there, but was met with very little enthusiasm or encouragement. I was a bit surprised given the rapidly expanding definition of a what it means to "play a video game" and the vast improvements in both technology and game design since the fall of "edutainment" games in the 90's.

As Lhyet noted, the development process is crucial and must be done right in order for such a game to succeed on both the pedagogical and ludogical (gameplay) levels. This is why I believe it is very important for this discussion to be dealt with in a public forum where learners and gamers can have their voices heard instead of being immediately silenced by industry execs.

Anyway, enough ranting for now. Thanks again for your continued feedback!

[Ezhno]

Anecdotal as well, but an alternate viewpoint to Cantih's:

I was able to join a Japanese social LS when I was starting to learn Japanese and I can say that the ability to access a conversation log between native speakers, and the ability to add to the conversation at times when I felt brave enough to, did help improve my vocabulary and did reinforce grammatical structures as well as teach me a couple new ones. The one thing about it expanding my vocabulary though, is that it mostly only expanded it in the direction of things such as event organization, battle tactics, and common pleasantries. These things were certainly valuable, but it's important to recognize the limitations, and now that I really think about it, the amount of Japanese vocabulary actually required to function in those discussions for game-related activities is disappointingly short. Even though I can easily say that I have no problem functioning completely in Japanese in FFXI, how specialized the vocabulary and common phrases are became obvious when I started picking up literature and other sources.

[Osede]

But I never saw anyone improve their English while a member, their capability was static as long as I knew them.

It can be improved up to a certain point. We used to have a few members that barely able to type any english. But over the years, they can at least express the stuff that most of the ppl can understand. And some of them do show a greatly improvement from the past. However, if you want to say about become more fluent, then it won't.

This happened to me too, when I first try to interact in some english spoken forum. Ppl did say I manage to improve the overall written skill, but still, the improvement just won't get me to the point where it is considered as execellent under the academic point of view.

[Asura_Zilla]

Anecdotal as well, but I began playing FFXI around the time I was 11, and I studied in a bilingual school. My English wasn't exactly bad, but I wouldn't have considered it good back then, but nowadays I do consider myself to be fully fluent in English - as a result of the combination of both facts. I do believe that (wasted time aside) playing FFXI did help my English a lot. Mostly my written conversational skills as well as my grammatical structuring skills, although my vocabulary expanded a lot as well (there's just something about having to look up a word for a dialogue you don't understand in a video game that regular coursework doesn't have).

I do agree with Obev on the point that verbal communication is a great point of interest to focus on though, as not necessarily someone that communicates well in written English will be able to say squat correctly (or have proper diction) in a proper verbal conversation, but then again everyone's experiences, learning capabilities and preferred learning methods differ.

Anyways responded to the survey, good luck with your project, seems like a good base that could branch out into a unique field of language teaching to me~

[Rooney]

Only one comment on the survey: I believe question #6 should include (have included) an option for reading material in the target language. By material I mean actual books/newspapers/etc, not material designed for teaching the target language. A couple years ago I picked up a book in Spanish on a whim and read it. That book alone taught me more about vocabulary and grammatical structure than any class I had taken.

Educational video games are entirely possible/practical as well. I actually had the opportunity to take a course on this topic my last semester at my college. The goal was to create a video game that could be used to teach high school aged students about our major (Landscape Architecture) and basic design principles. My project group took a very subtle approach to the problem and focused on making the game fun as opposed to educational. The game turned out to be rather popular with the students, and they also picked up on what we were attempting to teach them. I'm not sure how you could translate that into a foreign language game, but I am positive it can be done. Best of luck!

[SephYuyX]

Video games (namely XI) helped me greatly with learning Japanese.
Unless you live in an area where you can practice the language daily, you will lose it very fast.

Seeing as where I live there are very few JP speakers, the only other place aside from school was an online community.
Having played XI while it was JP only, pretty much forced me to increase and maintain what I learned from traditional means.

I still stand by my feelings that people need a proper in person base when learning a language; semantics, alphabet, grammar, accent, etc. After a person has the basics, they can move on no more non traditional means. But having someone physically next to you, helping you when you have problems will be the best way to do it. After that it doesnt matter, but you need to keep it up daily.

I started learning JP in 2002 in college, then stopped, maintained JP via XI, and when I ended up taking JP again 5 years later I still maintained what I had learned. Now that I only play XI a couple times a month.. ive pretty much forgotten everything. When trying to speak/read JP now a days I have to refer to my old notes and books.

[Kaylia]

My first english words were fight, item, ice, fire, and lit. Turn out one of them wasnt a word, but w/e.


I'm convinced that video game helped my english considerably over the year, even if its still far from good. When I was a kid (~8-14 years old), rpg were a good way to practice my reading skill and learn some vocabulary. When I was older, I started chatting online while playing starcraft, and eventually many others games. Then there was mmo, voice chat and everything.

It wasnt everything of couse, there was english class, TV shows, and the Internet as well, but video games is the reason why I know more than the average person where I live.

[Hyan]

I can't say I'm that good at learning new languages, but games sure did help me with learning English. As I started playing games from the age of 5 (and lol @ having them translated to Finnish) I was constantly looking at my dictionary to figure out wtf was going on. All these 'puzzle' games like RE were the worst but I learned a lot of vocabulary back then from translating the sentences one by one with a buddy of mine. RPG's and later MMO's did the rest of the work, although I still have a bit of a trouble with pronouncing.

It was also interesting how the 'gamers' in my class were all quite fluent in English but those who weren't tended to learn Swedish&German better and had more trouble with EN. I on the other hand couldn't learn Swedish even though I felt that ultimately it's an easier language to learn (and close to English). I came to the conclusion that even though English was all around us in the media, those who had interest in games also learned English much better as the result, so media in general was not the main reason for being (or not being) fluent in a language. My sis, for example, is fluent in Swedish but gets F's from English. Yet everywhere she goes there is English influence, but very little Swedish influence.

A language with lots of nuances like chinese may prove to be difficult to study with vidya as well... or it'd take a lot more work to make it practical at least. I don't think you can 'force' games on someone who doesn't care about them either. I don't think that helps with learning languages.. it must come through interest in gaming in general, imo anyway.

[TheTaru]

Anecdotal and not as detailed as others, but I learned a small amount of Japanese in XI too. Nowhere near enough for me to move to Japan tomorrow or anything, but enough that I could get the general idea of what was being said in XI. I felt it was just something I needed to do, due to my odd playing hours. That's a fairly important thing to consider; I didn't do it out of scholastic necessity or anything. I just wanted to be able to be able to make progress in the game when my English-speaking friends were asleep.

I'd say video games could definitely be helpful in learning a language, but I don't know if it would be better or as good as alternatives.

[arus2001]

While I haven't used video games for foreign language purposes, I'll just say that gaming did help me develop my reading and vocabulary skills since I favored RPGs while growing up. This also translated to online roleplaying/writing once I got access to a net capable computer when I was 13 or so. In general, having fun while learning, however such is achieved, beats the shit out of being bored and it feeling like work.

[Loryne]

I've received about 100 responses from BG alone, so a big thanks to all those who participated and contributed to this discussion!

The surveys will remain open for another week or so while I finish writing my literature review, so if there's anyone else who'd like to participate, please do so.

If anyone is interested in reading the final thesis, the finalized version is due to the university on April 21 and will be available online to the general public shortly afterward. I'll post the link in here once I have it.

Thanks again for all your thoughts! :D

[Plow]

o sweet aphma... wait wtf?

[Loryne]

So my thesis is written, defended, edited, and submitted to the grad school! Unfortunately, I cannot yet share it with you since the graduate school has not yet hosted it on their site, but I will post the link here as soon as they do.

In the meantime, however, feel free to check out my blog for musings on the topic and snippets of thesis research. Oh, and I'm developing my own game! Thanks to the folks at Idea System, I have early access to their new social game development kit and have begun the task (read: massive undertaking) of bringing my thesis recommendations to life. This process will also be chronicled on my blog, so check it out. :D

Thanks again for your participation. I received nearly 300 survey responses, all of which proved incredibly insightful and thought-provoking.