Vocabulary Treatment in Adventure and Role-Playing Games: A Playground for Adaptation and Adaptivity

Abstract

Although there is pedagogical support for using computer adventure and role-playing games in order to learn a second language (L2), commercial games often lack the instructional qualities for making their language comprehensible for learners. In an interdisciplinary approach, this paper proposes a technique for adapting in-game text in order to teach L2 vocabulary, grounded in research on second language acquisition and adaptive learning systems.

Investigating the Impact of Integrating Vocabulary Exercises Into an Adventure Video Game on Second Vocabulary Learning

“…Some researchers have indicated that the games provided an ideal language learning context (Rankin et al., 2006). In the adventure game, players may actively use the language to engage in the gaming content rather than passively listening to teachers’ content introductions or explanations (Cornillie et al., 2011). The players needed to use the language to take actions (e.g., talk to the NPCs) and explore many different possibilities in the story (e.g., ask questions to NPCs to find out solutions) in order to complete a series of missions.…”

“…(2016) have found that adventure games were more motivating and engaged students to explore in meaningful contexts compared with non-adventure games by meta-analyzing game-based vocabulary learning studies. Adventure video games have been widely recommended by many researchers (e.g., Baltra, 1990; Cornillie et al., 2011) and reviewed in some studies (Chen et al., 2016; Hung et al., 2018). One of the benefits of adventure games was that they were interactive in nature.…”

“…Szynalski (n.d.) pointed out that adventure games can enhance learners’ motivation and help them improve their English listening and speaking skills. Cornillie et al. (2011) suggested that adventure games created an immersive learning context where players must use the language and engage in discovery learning instead of simply noticing linguistic forms only.…”

“…Although adventure games were highly recommended by many researchers and had the potential for vocabulary learning, some researchers suggested that the adventure games mostly contained complex story plots and with difficult words (Chen & Yang, 2013; Cornillie et al., 2011) and the characters often spoke very quickly and the fleeting L2 subtitles cannot be stopped (Chen & Yang, 2013). More importantly, the point-and-click operation style of the adventure games cannot be assumed as the players’ comprehension of the story plots or learning of the unknown words (Cornillie et al., 2011). Despite the potential of the adventure games, these challenges may possibly reduce the chance for the players to notice and to learn more new words.…”

“…In response to these challenges in using the adventure games, Cornillie et al. (2011) suggested that adaptation should be made in the adventure games.…”