Innovation in Language Learning

Our paper focuses on the design and development of an edutainment scenario [1] as a learning system of Spanish language in a French school. Our purpose is to propose a didactic system that is relevant for the learning of Spanish, as a second language, in relation to the content of the curriculum of the secondary school. In order to design it, we have focused our interest on the potential of the serious game. We consider that this oxymoron has the potential to provide serious content in a playful way [1]. The use of video games for language learning has been the subject of several research cases. As a result, the positive impact of DGBLL tools has been reported in terms of improving learners' listening skills [2]. Moreover, certain criteria have been shown to be important in designing a serious game, including what aims for an optimal experience [3]. Therefore, we have designed and developed an edutainment scenario that integrates a serious game within a school sequence of five sessions, three of them with traditional authentic documents preparing the learners to the video game session, all in a classroom. The logic of designing a learning video game led us to start from the learning objectives on which we will graft a gameplay adapted to the learning needs. On the one hand, our choice to adopt this model is justified, because we consider the time of use of the serious game as a stage of language performance, on the other hand, because we seek to highlight the role of the teacher as a mediator of such a system. The teacher retains a determining role, because in a pedagogical aim in relation to the curriculum, the game is not an end in itself. Our edutainment scenario was tested in a public school with around 80 learners and three teachers. Following our test, we adopted a mixed method combining a quantitative and qualitative approach. We are now in the process of data analysis, which is focused on the results and the discussion about it. In order to evaluate our system, we adopted an interactionist approach to foreign language learning, which would focus on five criteria: language learning potential, learner adaptation, meaning, impact, authenticity and practicality [4].

Keywords: language learning, edutainment scenario, DGBLL.

References:

1. Alvarez, J. & Djaouti, D.: Introduction au serious game. Questions Théoriques, Paris (2012).
2. Levy, R. M. & O’Brien, M. G.: A Virtual World for Teaching German. Loading, 1, 1-17 (2006).
3. Chen, J.: Flow in games (and everything else). In Communications of the ACM, vol. 50, n°4. 31-34 (2007).
4. Chapelle, C. A.: Computer applications in second language acquisition. New York: Cambridge (2001).