Language for Specific Purposes and Graphic-Adventure Videogames:

Abstract

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.

Spanish B1 vocabulary acquisition among Chinese students withGuadalingo

“…Regarding the type of exercises in Guadalingo , they are similar to the ones proposed by Casañ-Pitarch (2017) in his taxonomy of exercises for graphic adventures: puzzles, quizzes, follow-up dialogues and gaming skills. Exercises based on gathering and using objects were not identified, although obtaining the fictional money in the game allows that the player can change the appearance of the avatar with new clothes, hairstyles or other complements.…”

“…We consider that it is also an advantage for the player that the input is transferred with both visual and audio resources. On the processing stage, the type of activities corresponds to the ones in the taxonomy of Casañ-Pitarch (2017) for this genre of games. The activities in Guadalingo are drills based on puzzles, quizzes and follow-up dialogues; however, we could not identify any activities related to going and finding objects, or promoting some gaming skills, which would probably enhance the players' engagement in this serious video game.…”

“…This is something that video games can easily offer with text to read or audios to listen to. As it was mentioned earlier, the type of activities at this stage tends to be the ones suggested by Casañ-Pitarch (2017) in his taxonomy of exercises for graphic-adventures: puzzles, quizzes, follow-up dialogues, go and find objects and gaming skills. They can be work in different ways, for example, the purpose of a puzzle can be to link characters to form a word, or from words to sentence, or from sentences to paragraph, or to organize paragraph to form a whole type of documents, such as a letter of complaint, covering letter, or order letter, among others.…”

Consideration of Subjective Effects of Virtual Reality Implementation upon Designing of Educational Systems

“…Scientific problematics of investigation into VR technologies in educational sphere are very wide. The most urgent topics related with VR vary from the technical aspects of immersive effects to the issues of teaching in primary school ( [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20], [21,22], [23,24]).…”