Design of a dual-hierarchy scaffolding board game-based learning activity for EFL reading comprehension

Abstract

Promoting English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ reading comprehension, improving their reading motivation, and reducing their anxiety have always been the focus of EFL researchers. Educational board games have gradually received attention from educators. Various studies have found that board game-based teaching can improve students’ learning performance, motivation, and classroom engagement, and contribute to increasing discussion. However, there are few discussions on board games in the field of EFL, so further discussion is necessary to fill the research gap of board games in EFL reading comprehension. This study developed a dual-hierarchical scaffolding board game activity framework integrating game-based learning (GBL) and scaffolding strategies, and used card board games as teaching materials to promote EFL students’ reading comprehension. The game activity framework provides a scaffolded language learning environment with dual-hierarchy concepts to support students in building successful reading strategies. Moreover, the verbal and visual representations are displayed together on the cards game component. Game mechanics can help students to link verbal and image information. On the other hand, this framework emphasizes allowing students to first use the group discussion and collaborative reading mode to conduct self-directed and game-based learning activities with the dual-hierarchy scaffolding strategy. Then the teacher guides the students to use the concepts learned in the game activities to analyse and read the text so that they can understand the text content. A quasi-experimental design was conducted in a high school English reading course to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed framework. The experimental results showed that the proposed framework not only significantly promoted the EFL students’ reading comprehension and learning motivation and decreased their learning anxiety, but also helped them maintain a high level of learning motivation in the process of the activities. It is expected that the proposed structure can lead to better EFL teaching practices.

Aprendizaje basado en juegos para el desarrollo de la comprensión lectora en adolescentes

“…This study revealed that game-based activities motivated students to participate in every learning session. Consequently, the findings of this study are consistent with those of McNamara (2018) andTai et al (2022), which found that gaming activities motivate students and increase their participation and vocabulary learning. In this regard, it is the responsibility of teachers to utilize language exercises to improve students' reading…”

“…Besides, the child or adolescent receives instant feedback regarding reading texts through the game. It allows learners to be aware of their degree of acquisition of what they have read and helps them discover what they should influence and focus on (Cheng-Tai et al, 2022). For this reason, well-planned after-reading classroom tasks are crucial to check students' understanding.…”

“…Therefore, findings included: some of the reviewed papers were experimental studies that involved the implementation of gaming elements in primary (Qamariah & Wahyuni, 2018), and secondary schools (Jackson & McNamara, 2018;Cheng-Tai et al, 2022), to enhance reading comprehension; and most of them published on international English learning and linguistics journals. Regarding the current topic of research, Abdeldaim & Kamal (2021) stated that educational games play a crucial role in new generations because they are part of their lives.…”

“…Hence, students would be their learning promotors and monitors. Moreover, authors analyzed and revealed that game-based learning decreases students' anxiety (Cheng-Tai et al, 2022), and there are many sources of enjoyment and motivation (Jackson & McNamara, 2018;Qamariah & Wahyuni, 2018;Dever et al, 2021); consequently, the teaching-learning process for Other authors focused on vocabulary and spelling improvement during reading comprehension exercises through games. First, Sulistianingsih et al (2019) used interactive board games in quasi-experimental research.…”

“…Otherwise, Aswandi (2020) proposed a matching game throughout action research where students improved from 59 in the pre-test to 63 in the first and 68 in the second. Interestingly, others found that games promote movement because the tendency is directed to board games, as Cheng-Tai et al (2022) stated, who made a literature review from the last five years.…”