During the present decade, researchers and educators of different fields have increased their attention towards digital game-based learning. The rise of interest towards this approach is partially connected to some important technological advances during the same period of time, such as the Smartphone, enhanced Internet connection from mobile devices, diversity and spread of free and low-cost video-games and educational applications in e-stores, development of speech recognition systems and artificial intelligence, among others. More concretely, this research focuses on the area of foreign language learning, an educational field which requires that students gain not only a solid theoretical knowledge on grammar and vocabulary, but they also need to develop different communicative competences; and this implies rehearsing and experiencing the use of the target language. The purpose of this paper is to define some basic concepts related to digital game-based learning, such as gamification and serious games, and to introduce some theoretical principles on foreign language learning and acquisition through the use of video-games based on literature review. Finally, a connection among these elements will be discussed.
New methods and approaches focusing on foreign language teaching are continuously being developed and applied in the classroom at different educational levels. The interest in raising learners' competences in foreign languages has been a fact in the last few decades. In this sense, approaches integrating the learning of non-linguistic content through a vehicular language that is not the learners' mother tongue have been widely used around the world. However, it seems that some benefits of those approaches integrating language and content could be further strengthened if the time of exposure to content and language was higher and if students were highly motivated to learn. To this purpose, this article suggests that serious videogames could be a suitable tool to provide learners with further teaching support and increase their motivation in a playful context and introduces a model that aims at gamifying and integrating content and language learning through serious videogames.
The use of videogames for educational purposes seems to increasingly be in the eye of teachers and publishers of didactic materials. Videogames can be a great support for language learners since they increase their time of exposure in an entertaining way. This research is a literature review which focuses on supporting language for specific purposes (LSP) students with graphic adventure videogames. This paper introduces theories of LSP teaching and learning combined with the characteristics of educational videogames with the aim of describing the needs to be considered when developing LSP videogames. In this sense, these videogames should be designed and adapted to particular professions related to the communication purposes of the target language. This proposal is addressed to LSP teaching professionals as well as for publishers of didactic materials. Enseñanza de Lengua para Fines Específicos a través de Aventuras Gráficas.ResumenEl uso de los videojuegos educativos parece estar más presente entre profesores y editoriales de materiales didácticos. Se ha demostrado que los videojuegos pueden ser un gran apoyo docente para estudiantes de idiomas ya que incrementan su tiempo de exposición a la lengua extranjera de manera lúdica. Esta investigación es una revisión de la literatura centrada en el estudio de la enseñanza y aprendizaje de lenguas para fines específicos (LFE) a través del género de videojuegos de aventuras gráficas. Este artículo presenta teorías sobre la enseñanza y aprendizaje de LFE combinadas con las características de los videojuegos educativos cuya finalidad es describir las necesidades a considerar cuando se desarrollaran videojuegos de LSP. Estos videojuegos se diseñaran basándose en profesiones relacionadas con la finalidad comunicativa de la lengua meta. Esta propuesta pretende ser de interés docente así como para editores de materiales didácticos.Palabras clave Videojuegos, lenguaje para fines específicos, aprendizaje de segundas lenguas, aventuras gráficas.
This paper presents an experiment which focused on determining if a telecollaborative project work would help enhance students' foreign language skills and cross-cultural competence. Students from Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and the Polytechnic University of Valencia worked together during the fall term in 2020, in which 56 Ukrainian and Spanish students were engaged in a telecollaborative programme -32 were master degree students at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, whereas the remaining 24 were bachelor engineering students at Polytechnic University of Valencia. Our students were engaged in a project work which consisted in the creation of a blog on the topic 'Sustainable Development Today'. The tools used in this project were mostly Google applications such as Classroom, Hangouts, Blogger, Drive, and Docs. In order to measure their progress, students took pre-tests before the project started and a post-test after its completion. These tests focused on assessing learners' language competence in English and also their cross-cultural competence. The language test used was designed by Cambridge University Press, whereas the cross-cultural test had been created by the Organizational Behavior Group (Piasentin, 2012). The latter focused on learners' willingness to engage, cognitive flexibility and openness, emotional regulation, tolerance of uncertainty, self-efficacy, and ethnocultural empathy. As expected, the students who participated in this virtual exchange programme enhanced their competence on both foreign language cross-cultural competences by taking an active part in the telecollaborative project work.
Learning foreign languages has become necessary in present society, yet most government policies to promote regularly use foreign languages in their daily lives. As a result, there is a real need for new language teaching approaches traditional methods, since it involves the integration of language and content. Additionally, project work can be used in support of CLIL approaches in order to increase interaction among participants and promote learning autonomy, making this a desirable part of CLIL programs. To examine the issues surrounding project work in CLIL more closely, this paper Keywords: CLIL; project work; bilingualism; language teaching; education. ResumenEl aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras se ha convertido en una necesidad en la sociedad actual, aunque la mayoría de las Europea señala que solo el 35% de los europeos utiliza regularmente lenguas extranjeras en su vida cotidiana. Como resultado, existe una necesidad real de nuevos enfoques de enseñanza de idiomas que mejoren el sistema educativo actual. El enfoque AICLE se ha considerado una alternativa a otros métodos más tradicionales, ya que implica la integración interacción entre los participantes y promover la autonomía en el aprendizaje, haciendo de este un método atractivo en los programas AICLE. Para examinar las cuestiones relacionadas con el trabajo de proyectos en AICLE más de cerca, este Palabras clave: AICLE; trabajo del proyecto; bilingüismo; enseñanza de idiomas; educación.
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