ARTICLE REVIEW

Title: Language Learners & Computer Games: From Space Invaders to Second Life

Journal: TESL-EJ Volume 11, Number 4

Authors: Graham Stanley is the product development manager for the British Council 'Learn English Second Life for Teens' project and works as senior teacher at the British Council Barcelona Young Learner Centre.

Kyle Mawer is project officer of the British Council 'Learn English Second Life for Teens' project and teacher at the British Council Barcelona Young Learner Centre.

Article Summary:

The authors explain that there is a fine line between serious concentration and play. Meaning that when we play, we are actually concentrating on the task at hand rather than having what is usually assumed as “mindless fun”. Here, the authors propose to break the isolation that has existed between education and genuine fun by introducing computer games in the language learning environment. And by computer games, the authors don’t mean educational games per se (CALL specific games, which go under the banner “Serious Games”) but “real” computer games that have no obvious link to language learning. The authors explain that teachers should be interested in using games with learners because we have reached a generation of students who have mostly grew up playing computer games, and that by using computer games as a teaching aid in class, we appeal to their interests and actually make language learning relevant to their world (Johnson, 2006). This can be done from simply mentioning or relating a few computer games during a lesson to actually implementing computer games as teaching aids for lessons. The types of games include computer games for Windows, console games (Playstation 1, 2 , and 3, Playstation Portable, Xbox, Xbox360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, etc), free online games (Escape from the Bar, Samorost2, Grow Cube, Mystery of Time and Space [MOTAS], Nesquik, Quest for the Rest), Massively Multiplayer online role-playing games or MMORPGs (World of Warcraft, etc), and virtual worlds (Second Life, etc). Language learning components revolve around the game walkthrough, activities include Cloze Passage (students fill in the blanks to parts of the walkthrough with a list of words provided by the teacher), Relay Reading (Students work in pairs and one student relays parts of the walkthrough by reading and memorising the walkthrough which is placed at a distance), Jigsaw Reading (Each group has different information from a different part of the text and they must ask the other student questions about the part of the text they need. In this way students work collectively to gain understanding and complete the task), Game Dictogloss (Students watch the teacher play the game and write the main words and short phrases that a particular task within the game needs), etc. In Second Life, there are over 120 universities operating virtually where users can access and learn from them via Sim Teach, Virtual Language Academies, and even the British Council have opened a self-access centre island for teen language learners in the teen section of Second Life.

My Reaction:

As a gamer myself, I understand the relationship between gaming pleasure and brain activity, since every computer game has an objective and it is the gamer’s role to figure out how to achieve these objectives. This interaction can involve our problem-solving skills which can range from simply moving a virtual object from one point to another, to puzzle solving skills, to even complicated think-outside-the-box skills where not only our knowledge is tested, but even our imagination. As a teacher, I have referred to computer games during my lessons, and I am proud to inform that I was repeatedly successful in capturing my students’ interest and providing something that they can relate to. I highly regard the activities suggested by the authors as they provide language learning activities to students as they try to figure out how to complete a game, which in my opinion keeps students’ interests high and makes learning meaningful to them. This makes for highly effective learner centered language learning. I believe that by combining computer games and language learning, the need to find different ways to capture a student’s interest is eliminated by the involvement of the computer game itself. And by making the learning activity part of the task in completing the game’s objective(s), learning is made meaningful to the student as it has allowed him/her to achieve the pleasure of succeeding in the computer game. Although in the Malaysian context it is highly unlikely that this method of language learning would be implemented anytime soon due to the lack of ICT equipment in many schools and homes, I believe that our country is heading towards a future where almost every house and school will have easy access to computers and the Internet, and this makes the near future fertile grounds for computer games to be used as teaching aids in ESL.