This post is a 2-part article about learning new words with videogames
PART 1
For international students, learning a new language is both a huge difficulty and a global necessity. Because English is THE international language for business, science, and culture, it is always popular. A workforce that is proficient in this worldwide language is necessary for all nations. A new language is always a great difficulty because of its immense originality.
Compared to European immigrants, immigrants from non-European nations who did not speak English as their first language performed worse in the language. Some languages which depend more on morphology and word order, employ intonation, or shifts in pitch, to distinguish vocabulary and transmit semantic meaning.
Every symbol, or combination of symbols, symbolizes a phoneme in writing, yet the rules governing this representation are not always clear. Beyond these distinctions, the main reason a new idiom is hard to learn is that it usually has a huge number of words far different from other languages; it borrows terms from an overwhelming variety of other languages, reflecting past invasions, colonial histories, and a willingness to accept new linguistic entrants.
Linguistic second language acquisition studies support the difficulty that many university students face when learning the language. According to several studies, people or teenagers learning a new language later in life may not be as proficient in the language’s phonology or grammar as those who start earlier.
However, studies on the grammatical proficiency of bilinguals whose first language is German or French—two languages with Latin origins—do not consistently demonstrate a correlation between the age at which a person arrived in USA and their understanding of English grammar.
University students find it difficult to learn a new language because of a number of issues other than linguistic differences at birth. Many college students use tedious study techniques, such memorizing word lists by heart without ever applying them in context.
Many students observe that rote memorization of word lists (together with a text passage containing the words) is required for university language classes, and that students have complained about how boring these techniques are.
It seems, however, that no one has looked into an intentional vocabulary acquisition game-play intervention created for a particular course and formal learning environment. The present article focused on how students could learn new words outside of the classroom and the resources they can utilize—videogames, specifically—for this purpose.
We recognize that there are a variety of components and variables that go into both traditional study methods and educational game play. Video games, for example, come with built-in rewards. But the purpose of this article was to offer an initial evaluation of whether undergraduate students may acquire new words more successfully by using a game-based approach. The current article goes over our exciting online game play solution in detail and considers how it might be better than more conventional approaches to learning vocabulary.
Learning new words is an important part of undergraduate English courses worldwide. The college curriculum specifies specific vocabulary sizes for the basic, intermediate, and advanced requirements. Students have to learn between 1,000 to 2,000 words for basic conversation and 8,000 words for advanced students of which are active words that they have to be able to use fluently in both speaking and writing.
For pleasure reading of short, straightforward novels, researchers found that a vocabulary of 5,000 words was sufficient, but reading first-year university materials required twice as many words. Despite knowing that vocabulary education is highly valued in college classes, one of the most significant challenges facing college students remains increasing it.
The most common method used by students to acquire words is rote memorizing of phrase lists found in textbooks and other books. From our personal experience, most of the learners considered acquiring new words as a chore. We teach sections of English courses for Spanish students at several institutes. They disliked the fact that, after spending a lot of time learning new terms, they only remembered a small percentage of them. Pedagogical innovation is necessary in this context.
We had an interest in developing a video game that would alter students’ approach to learning new words by utilizing novel strategies. While there are immersive online games that allow players to communicate with one another, we concentrated on a single-player game in our discussion of the effects of computer games on learning in people. We also addressed other nonsocial effects associated with videogames, like their design.
At last, we found that college students taking classes and using web-based eBooks gained more new words with the help of videogames than they did with traditional methods (word lists, multiple-choice questions, and hardcopy readings).
Also, there was an important connection discovered between their game scores and the number of new words learnt, suggesting that motivated game play and achievement were the primary causes of learning. Students that play games while learning are more motivated to practice and acquire up novel terms.
