Gamifying Content and Language Integrated Learning with Serious Videogames

Abstract

New methods and approaches focusing on foreign language teaching are continuously being developed and applied in the classroom at different educational levels. The interest in raising learners' competences in foreign languages has been a fact in the last few decades. In this sense, approaches integrating the learning of non-linguistic content through a vehicular language that is not the learners' mother tongue have been widely used around the world. However, it seems that some benefits of those approaches integrating language and content could be further strengthened if the time of exposure to content and language was higher and if students were highly motivated to learn. To this purpose, this article suggests that serious videogames could be a suitable tool to provide learners with further teaching support and increase their motivation in a playful context and introduces a model that aims at gamifying and integrating content and language learning through serious videogames.

A triangulation method on the effectiveness of digital game-based language learning for vocabulary acquisition

“…For example, Dickey ( 2007 ) claimed that DGBLL can reorganize an immersive story and, as a consequence, bolster meaningful learning through problem-based objectives. Furthermore, game-based language learning supports students’ language acquisition practices by improving mind maps (Casañ-Pitarch, 2017 ). This results in the learner's previous experiences being comprehensible.…”

Social Realism in Red Orchestra 2 (2011)

“…By prioritizing descriptions of game mechanics in favor of narrative context, Galloway's text can be refined to understand how games are unique in their attempts at social realism. Future examination of social realism in video games should utilize Ian Bogost's (2007) concept of Procedural Rhetoric, that is "making arguments with computational systems" (p. 3).…”

“…As Galloway argues, this is an invaluable term in discussions of visual and literary arts, yet the medium specificity of video games requires some reevaluation to correctly apply to the discourse of games studies. The approach Galloway takes to pinpoint the unique qualities of games can be furthered through Ian Bogost's (2007) conceptualization of the ways which games utilize their rule-based processes to persuade players through "procedural rhetoric." This paper will attempt to refine Galloway's notion of social realism in games though (1) closer examination of the texts Galloway uses to define this realism and (2) analysis of a case study with Bogost's procedural rhetoric in-mind.…”

Adapting Competitiveness and Gamification to a Digital Platform for Foreign Language Learning

“…The narrative is the way to tell a story from the point of view of a character within a video game and that can include different plots depending on the actions performed by the player [48]. As told by [49], it is possible to learn by doing pleasant and entertaining activities, such as watching a movie, reading a book or watching a theater play. These activities teach a message indirectly, which is received by those who perform these activities, who in turn take a role of spectators but not participants.…”