Innovation in Language Learning

Teaching foreign languages in Primary Education classrooms usually counts on different strategies so that their learners use the new language (role-playing, games, songs, foreign language assistants …). However, it is frequent to find students who lack motivation and would rather not take part in lessons, becoming too passive subjects in our classrooms. Therefore, several teachers are opting to gamify their lessons to improve the learning of their students, (Kapp, 2012; Connolly et al., 2012; Ke, 2009; Sitzman, 2011; Domínguez et al., 2013, cited by Faiella y Ricciardi, 2015), likewise, we propose an educative innovation to gamify our classroom in order that our learners are more participating. In order to do so, we have designed an educative innovation with serious games, this innovation has been set up in two groups of Primary Education, 5th and 6th years, along a term in English as a first foreign language. Lastly, this intervention has been assessed taking into account the information in the pre-test and post-test of the academic self-regulation questionnaire (self-regulation questionnaire academic by Ryan y Connell, 1989), a satisfaction questionnaire for the learners (mixture of open questions by Garcia et al., 2018, and closed questions by Hernández, 2018) and the notes gathered byt the teacher during the participating observation (Nuñez y Gutierrez, 2016).

Keywords: English, Primary Education, gamification, motivation, learning. 

References:
[1] Faiella, F. y Ricciardi, M. (2015). Gamification and learning: a review of issues and research. Journal of e-learning and Knowledge society, 11(3), 14-21. Retrieved from
https://www.academia.edu/33336538/
GAMIFICATION_AND_LEARNING_A_REVIEW_OF_ISSUES_AND_RESEARCH
[2] García, F., García, Ó. y Martín, M. (2018). La gamificación como recurso para la mejora del aprendizaje del Inglés en educación primaria. En F. J. Murillo (Coord.),  Avances en democracia y liderazgo distribuido en educación: Actas del II Congreso internacional de liderazgo y mejora de la educación (pp. 466-468). Madrid: Red de Investigación sobre Liderazgo y Mejora de la Educación (RILME). Retrieved from:
//hdl.handle.net/10486/682944
[3] Núñez, A. y Gutiérrez, I. (2016). Flipped learning para el aprendizaje del inglés en Educación Primaria. EDUTEC, Revista Electrónica de Tecnología Educativa, (56), 89-102. Retrieved:
http://www.edutec.es/revista
[4] Ryan, R. M. y Connell, J.P. (1989). Perceived locus of causality and internalization: Examining reasons for acting in two domains. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(5), 749-761. Retrieved from:
https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/1989_RyanConnell.pdf