The Effects of Digital Game Play on Second Language Interaction

This paper reports on a study into the effects of digital game play on learners' interaction in English as a foreign language. 30 Thai learners of English enrolled in a 15-week University language course completed 18 face-to-face classroom lessons, as well as six sessions playing Ragnarok Online, a popular online role-playing game. The game had been altered to include a number of quests for learners to complete. To gauge the effects of playing the games, participants' language use in both text and voice chats was recorded and analysed. Game play resulted in a large and significant increase in English interaction that used a wider range of discourse functions, and also resulted in significantly more frequent contributions compared with English interaction in class. We discuss some of the theoretical and pedagogical implications of these findings.

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