Other‐Repetition as a Resource for Participation in the Activity of Playing a Video Game

Abstract

This article offers an empirically based contribution to the growing body of studies using Conversation Analysis (CA) as a tool for analyzing second/foreign language learning in and through interaction. Building on a sociointeractional view of learning as grounded in the structures of participation in social activities, we apply CA methods to examine the affordances offered by interaction during the activity of playing a video game for additional language learning. We focus on one type of interactional practice, lexical and prosodic repetition, as a recurring resource through which players attend to the game and collaboratively build their understanding and experience of game events. We argue that other-repetition offers participants a resource for not only interpreting the game but also for engaging with the second language, analyzing it, and putting it to use in ways that enable players to display and develop their linguistic and interactional competence.THIS STUDY BUILDS ON THE GROWING body of research exploring the interrelationship of second/foreign language use, structures of interaction, and additional language learning. As demonstrated in a number of recent publications

About a Boy: A Gamer and L2 English Speaker Coming into Being by Use of Self-Access

“…For example, in a Finnish study, Piirainen-Marsh and Tainio (2009) examined two boys in their lower teens who played a game called Final Fantasy X. Again, the findings were very positive with regard to English skills.…”

Readers, Players, and Watchers: EFL Students’ Vocabulary Acquisition through Digital Video Games

“…If a word is retrieved from memory for subsequent use, it is more likely to be remembered later in time. Repetition, for example, is an effective activity in promoting retrieval (Nation, 2001) and understanding events in a DVG (Marsh & Tainio, 2009). Creative or generative use is utilizing learned vocabulary in different contexts/ways.…”

Self-Access and Metacognitive Awareness in Young Learners: How Japanese Sixth Graders Learn How to Learn English

“…Recently, there have been several studies on self-access in which young learners (ranging in age from ten to fourteen years old) demonstrated academic improvement in English from having played online multi-player video games outside of school (Jeon, 2014;Piirainen-Marsh & Tainio, 2009;Sundqvist, 2015;Sundqvist & Sylvén, 2014). Sundqvist and Sylvén (2014) found that Swedish learners of English demonstrated improvement in speaking and vocabulary through out-of-school gaming.…”