ARTICLE CRITIQUE

THE EFFECT OF DIGITAL VIDEO GAMES ON EFL STUDENTS’ LANGUAGE

LEARNING MOTIVATION

The study by Ebrahimzadeh and Alavi (2017) aimed to explore the possible impact of a

commercial digital video game (DVG) on students’ language learning motivation (LLM) to learn

a foreign language, specifically English. The authors’ reason to use a commercial DVG instead

of the educational one lies in their distinctive objectives. While the latter is used mainly for

educational purposes, in this case, to learn English, the former treats English as a means to “a

greater end” – winning the game itself. This results in commercial DVGs not being restricted in

content and generally less boring than educational DVGs in students’ perception.

Thus, the purpose of the study was to examine the effect of commercial DVGs on LLM

of secondary school EFL students and in addition, to investigate the possible differences in the

LLM of Players (students who directly play the game) and Watchers (students who only observe

others playing).

The study involved 241 participants (all of them were male Iranian high school students

who did not have any experience with the use of commercial DVGs in the classroom). They

were first tested to check their English proficiency; all of whom were at A1 level, according to

the Common European Framework of Reference. During the study, the participants were divided

randomly into 3 groups: Readers (students who only watched short excerpts from the game and

checked their understanding with reading activities), Players, and Watchers.

Five reading passages based on the game were written to teach the 21 target vocabulary

items (selectively taken from the game Defense of the Ancients) to Readers. It should be noted
that all of them had been tested for appropriateness for A2 level, one level higher than students’

current level.

The study also used the motivation scale developed by Carreira (2006) which focuses on

intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Regarding the commercial game chosen for the study, the DVG Warcraft III: The Frozen

Throne was picked on the basis that the optimal commercial DVG for learning a foreign

language should be able to promote the understanding of the target language as the means to win

the game. Another aspect to consider was the suitability of this game in terms of age and

popularity. The learning opportunities offered by the game were also considered suitable based

on the Presentation-Practice-Production model of Nunan.

Two weeks before the study, all students participated in the preliminary proficiency test,

the motivation scale, and the vocabulary pre-test. Then, they were to attend a total of five 50-

minute sessions, one session per week. In each session, 3-6 vocabulary items were introduced to

the three groups: Readers, Players, and Watchers. Eventually, the students took the motivation

post-test a week after the study.

The Readers’ experience began with watching a short video related to what they were

going to read in the reading passage. They also needed to complete post-reading activities when

finished.

The Players’ and Watchers’ treatment took place at the same time due to the lack of

facilities in Iranian high schools. Players would work in groups to play the game and try to

obtain the target vocabulary items along the way. The Watchers would observe the Players and

provide hints and encouragement for the Players. Each game lasted for an average of 35 minutes.
 The primary finding was that LLM significantly increased throughout the study.

However, only the Watchers had a significantly higher LLM than the Readers. Other than that,

there was no significant difference between the treatments.

These results led to the implication that DVGs, especially commercial ones could be

employed in the EFL classroom as a learning instrument which could considerably increase

students’ LLM and learning outcomes. With this, the authors also suggested that a teacher-

directed classroom may not be the ultimate approach in teaching a foreign language.

Overall, the organization of the article is fairly well organized. The problem for the

research was also described fairly well and the review of theories demonstrates a clear

relationship to the problem. The methodology was comprehensive, using quantitative tasks as

well as the use of field notes to investigate the case study.

However, the scope to investigate the study was greatly restricted as it only stops at the

relationship between commercial DVGs and LLM and did not really tap into the practical use of

commercial games as a new learning instrument in the formal EFL classroom. In addition, the

results of the study were not highly applicable for practical teaching decisions or the redesigning

of curricula due to the fact that it only involved participants of one gender. Although the results

received from the three groups of students were presented in an elaborate way, they do not seem

to provide enough statistically significant data that could lead to more important findings in

terms of the practicality of commercial DVGs.

In the discussion, the authors encouraged the use of commercial DVGs as a way to

motivate EFL students and improve the learning outcomes. However, they did not consider the

practicality and suitability of the vocabulary items students can derive from the DVGs. As can be
seen from the selection of the target vocabulary items in this study, most of the lexical items are

not related to the real world and thus, have a low practicality in real-life situation. Whether the

students could produce language with these lexical items or not is also questionable since these

fragmented, concrete vocabularies items were not learnt in a systematical way, but were used for

checking students’ LLM only.

 References

Ebrahimzadeh, M., & Alavi, S. (2017). The Effect of Digital Video Games on EFL Students’

Language Learning Motivation. Teaching English with Technology, 17(2), 87-112.