Blog Post II

Digital Games 

Hi guys, this is a post based on the reading:

Multiuser Digital Games as Sites for Research and Practice

By Julie M. Sykes, Jonathon Reinhardt, and Steven L. Thorne

In the last decade there have been a considerable number of pc games released. Those games can be classified in different genres as cited by the authors. These genres can be divided into shooter, action, strategy, role playing, adventure, simulation and sports genres. Besides the genres there are three main modes of playing such as single players, multi-players or massive number of players as stated by the authors. Undoubtedly, multiuser digital games are a valuable source of research and practice both for EFL (English as a foreign language) and ESL (English as a second language) teachers. Digital games are understood as those which human to human interaction occurs.

Games have been used for a wide range of fields such as history, science, military operations and so on. In this sense, language learning is a potential field for digital games. Lankshear and Knobel (2006 as cited by the authors) argued that:

“Digital games are significant for language learning, not only as potentially useful new tools within the confines of traditional foreign language contexts, but more importantly, as new semiotic and cultural environments which construct, and are constructed by, ontologically new social practices”.

In other words, digital games offer not only the chance to acquire or improve a language but also to negotiate meaning in terms of culture and identity. It is also known that multiplayer digital games entail social and cognitive forms of interaction. It means that the interaction between players can create a way to experience the world socially, economically and politically speaking. The authors said that multiplayer online games are a worthy option for language learning “first and foremost multiplayer, which means that players can, and in many cases are required to, interact and collaborate through the game interface in real-time”.

Games can have several characteristics like engagement, enjoyment, setting and scaffolding. Some experts argued that well designed games offer a step by step setting just like Vygotsky´s zone of proximal development theory. In addition, these games have a special feature concerning task based. It is related to the “level up” which players have to achieve goal oriented activities or quests. Thus, collaborative group activities emerged, as a mean of achieving the goals and gaining access to the next levels of the game. When collaborative activities are hold players might use a neutral language like English like in the example mentioned by the author which a Russian and an American player carried out a specific goal together. They not only share the language experience in English and Russian but also they share cultural and personal backgrounds.

Moreover, MMOGs offer a social interaction which might lead to romantic, political, economic and cultural encounters. In this sense social practices and behaviors are a central focus of research.

On the other hand, the authors mentioned three different approaches to understand the impact of playing a digital game for learning purposes. They considered that ‘learning the language to play the game’ is a more useful approach to practice than ‘playing the game to learn the language’.

In terms of research, there is still a lot to investigate. However, the focus could be on:

Guided exploration and analysis would involve an embedded cycle of description, analysis, and interpretation— description would involve situating the narratives; analysis would involve relating them to the rule-based structure of the game; and interpretation would involve critically framing the narratives and relating them to broader socio-cultural discourses, including attendant discourses of gaming culture. Creation and participation would involve informed and transformed play, developing both L2 literacy and game literacy (Gee 2007).

Finally, I am going to mention my own experience as English teacher with digital games. First of all, I must say that I am not used to play digital games or so. I played old versions of digital games offline when I was a teen. Regarding teaching I have used some online games which are not multiplayers and that are focused on language learning itself.  Personally, I consider that digital games are a great source for language learning. However, there are not clear guidelines to use them effectively and accurately. There are some teachers who think that is time consuming and as it is an unconscious process the progress is almost nulled. I agree to some extent, based on my own experience because I have played these games without leaning much. I mean, they are quite useful for learning vocabulary but in order to develop the four skills I find it unreliable. Nonetheless, we must be clear about the real function of games which is entertainment not teaching of course. In that sense, we cannot expect digital games to replace formal learning (classroom based, distance learning and virtual learning). To sum up, I would say that games are still a great possibility to motivate students to learn a language (especially English) and interact with people from different cultures but it is not a method to teach a language.