Teaching English vocabulary and online games to eighth grade students

Abstract

The objective is based on exploring the impact of the use of online educational games in comparison with traditional classroom methods to teach English vocabulary to eighth grade students at Mercedes Vázquez Correa School. Quantitative approach with a participation of 13 students. By means of a vocabulary retention test, results were obtained showing that students remember a greater amount of vocabulary by means of traditional methods; however, students remember a greater amount of words accurately with the use of online games. In addition, the survey data reveal that students are comfortable with online games and that they prefer to learn vocabulary through online games rather than through drawings or flashcards in class.

Online Games and English as a Foreign Language Vocabulary Learning Among Eighth-Grade Students

“…These findings align with the concept of "digital natives" proposed by Prensky (2001), which suggests that today's students are highly accustomed to technology. Therefore, the present investigation, as well as previous studies, promote its implementation to create a teaching and learning environment suitable for 21 st century students (Pintado-Peñaloza & Fajardo-Dack, 2022;Sadiku et al, 2017;Utku & Dolgunsöz, 2018).…”

“…Moreover, the lack of motivation among students was very noticeable because they qualified English as something quite complex and boring because their teachers rarely used technology and focused primarily on teaching grammatical rules for writing sentences. The aforementioned problems were also found in other studies, which indicated that students struggled to learn vocabulary because it is tied to passive teaching methods that are not interesting, do not increase motivation, and require translation, fill-in-the-blanks activities, and word memorization (Alnatour & Hijazi, 2018;Derbouche & Hamadouche, 2016;Hasram et al, 2021;Pintado-Peñaloza & Fajardo-Dack, 2022;Romero et al, 2023).…”