The Effect of Video Games on Iranian EFL Learners’ Vocabulary Learning

Sedigheh VahdatShahid Chamran UniversityAmin Rasti BehbahaniIslamic Azad University

Speakers:Diego Paredes Cid.

Rocío Vargas Alarcón.Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción.

Introduction.

“One cannot learn language without vocabulary” (Kang, 1995).

• Video games are a revolution for the English language.

Literature review

• Importance of Vocabulary Learning. generalservice vocabulary special-purpose vocabulary(Nation and Kyongho, 1995)

• context-embedded approach (Kang, 1995)• knowledge of 2000 to 3000 highfrequencywords is necessary (Zhang and Annual. 2008)

• Video-Game Studies“Play is crucial to learning new skills” (Piaget 1962)

Schlimme (2002) : “the players’ vocabulary levels may increase”

“video games enhace a learner’s language acquisition” (DeHaan, 2005)

• Brown, Hall, Holtzer, Brown, and Brown (1997)

“They concluded that males perform better thanfemales in video games, but that both genders improve significantly in their vocabulary skill with video-game use”

The study.

• General objective:To what extent do video games help learners acquire vocabularyover those who acquire vocabulary without using video games?

• Specific objective:Do females acquire vocabulary via video games better, or do males?

• Participants:

Forty subjects20 males and 20 females Ages: from 23 to 27 years old.

Students majoring in English teaching at Azad University

Instruments.

• Simulated TOEFL.

• Forty multiple-choice questions achievement test.

• Likert-scaled questionnaire.

Materials and Procedure.

• The experimental group used video games to learn new words.

• The control group used five text-drill chapters designed by the researchers about the game.

Data analysis

Data analysis

Analisys and conclusion.

• As the results of this study show, video-game based learning has a strong effect on acquiring new vocabulary, which confirms what Schlimme (2002) and Turgut and Irgin (2009) predicted.

• Repetition in games allows a language learner to be continuously exposed to the target language, creating more opportunities for acquisition to occur.

Analisys and conclusion.

• The results of this study also revealed that there is a highly positive correlation between gender and learning vocabulary via video games.

• The results of this study have implications for designers of educational video games, teachers, and students. Language teachers are advised to use video games in their classrooms, especially for vocabulary building.