Can an interactive digital game help French learners improve their pronunciation?

Abstract

This study examines the effects of the pedagogical use of an interactive mobile digital game, Prêt à Négocier (PàN), on improving learners' pronunciation of French as a Second Language (FSL), using three holistic measures: comprehensibility, fluency, and overall pronunciation. Two groups of FSL learners engaged in different types of game-playing over one month: while the experimental group played PàN, the control group engaged in paper-based gamified information gap activities. Following a pre-test/post-test research design, our findings revealed no statistically significant differences between the two groups.

Effect of Gamification on students’ motivation and learning achievement in Second Language Acquisition within higher education: a literature review 2011-2019

“…As the only clearly negative result, Cardoso et al (2017) demonstrated that using a gamified tool (Prêt à Négocier) in a French course of intermediate level, did not show significant differences on oral skills (comprehensibility and fluency) between a treatment and a control group.…”

“…Practically all of them were conducted with the help of free applications that can be easily accessed or downloaded from the Internet and used whether on a computer or a mobile device. Most experiments incorporated a gamified resource especially created for the study (Berns, et al & Dodero, 2016;Cardoso, et al 2017;Liu, et al 2016;Palomo-Duarte et al, 2016;Perry, 2015), whereas Duolingo and Kahoot were the most popular commercial apps (Bustillo, et al 2017;Gafni, et al 2017;Hung, 2017;Iaremenko, 2017;Mateo-Gallego & Ruiz Yepes, 2018;Munday, 2016). English stands out among the second languages studied.…”

“…This is probably due to the fact that Gamification is often used exactly for that purpose: stimulating psycho-behavioural aspects like motivation and engagement. In fact, almost half of the studies (6) focussed only on psychobehavioural evidence such as motivation, engagement or attitudes towards the gamified experience (Barcena & Sanfilippo, 2015;Gafni et al, 2017;Iaremenko, 2017;Liu et al, 2016;Munday, 2016;Perry, 2015), five papers were focussed on a combination of psycho-behavioural and cognitive effects (Berns et al, 2016;Bustillo et al, 2017;Castañeda & Cho, 2016;Hung, 2017;Kétyi, 2016) and four were centred just on cognitive results (Cardoso et al, 2017;Mateo-Gallego & Ruiz Yepes, 2018;Palomo-Duarte et al, 2016;Purgina, Mozgovoy, & Blake, 2019).…”

“…4 (Berns et al, 2016), (Bustillo et al, 2017), (Castañeda & Cho, 2016), (Hung, 2017) Positive both on learning achievement and attitude towards gamification 3 (Iaremenko, 2017), (Liu et al, 2016), (Perry, 2015) Positive on engagement and motivation 2 (Barcena & Sanfilippo, 2015), (Gafni et al, 2016) Positive on attitude towards gamification 2 (Palomo-Duarte et al, 2016), (Purgina et al, 2019) Positive on learning achievement 1 (Kétyi, 2016) Positive on learning achievement and motivation but with no correlation Mixed methodologies combining quantitative and qualitative research seemed to be predominant in this research field (Barcena & Sanfilippo, 2015;Berns et al, 2016;Castañeda & Cho, 2016;Hung, 2017;Kétyi, 2016;Mateo-Gallego & Ruiz Yepes, 2018;Munday, 2016;Perry, 2015). There were also a considerable number of researchers who chose purely quantitative methods (Bustillo et al, 2017;Cardoso et al, 2017;Gafni et al, 2016;Iaremenko, 2017;Palomo-Duarte et al, 2016, Purgina et al, 2019, but qualitative research on its own was used in just one study (Liu et al, 2016).…”

“…Among those studies including quantitative methodology, five papers (Cardoso et al, 2017;Hung, 2017;Kétyi, 2016;Mateo-Gallego & Ruiz Yepes, 2018;Purgina et al, 2019) out of fourteen included a comparative method using pre-and post-tests with control and experimental groups. (Berns et al, 2016), (Castañeda & Cho, 2016), (Hung, 2017), (Kétyi, 2016), (Mateo-Gallego & Ruiz Yepes, 2018), (Munday, 2016), (Perry, 2015) Quantitative and qualitative (Hung, 2017), (Kétyi, 2016), (Mateo-Gallego & Ruiz Yepes, 2018) 6 (Bustillo et al, 2017), (Cardoso et al, 2017), (Gafni et al, 2016), (Iaremenko, 2017), (Palomo-Duarte et al, 2016), (Purgina et al, 2019) Quantitative (Cardoso et al, 2017), (Purgina et al, 2019) 1 (Liu et al, 2016) Quantitative None…”