Exploring the Role of Frequency and Metacognition in Digital Game-Based L2 Vocabulary Acquisition
José Ramón Calvo-Ferrer, Universidad de Alicante (Spain)
Abstract
Video games have been extensively employed in educational contexts to teach contents and skills, upon the premise that they engage students and provide instant feedback, which makes them adequate tools in the field of education and training. Term frequency, along with metacognition and implicit corrective feedback, has often been identified as powerful variables in the learning of vocabulary in a foreign language (Brown 1993). This study analyses the learning of L2 mobile operating system terminology by a group of students and uses the data collected by the video game The Conference Interpreter (Calvo-Ferrer et al. 2013) to identify the predictive strength of term frequency (times a term is shown), positive metacognition (times a right answer is provided), and negative metacognition (times a term is shown as wrong) regarding L2 vocabulary learning and perceived learning outcomes. The regression analysis shows that the factor ‘positive metacognition’ is a positive predictor of both dependent variables, whereas the other factors seem to have no statistical effect on any of them.
Keywords: video games, serious games, DGBLL, vocabulary learning, metacognition, frequency, feedback;