Abstract:

The use of games as a means of education is justified by the similarity of some components of play and education (their aims, motives and instruments), by the human inherent need for play, and the possibility to use it to stimulate the process of learning through the design of play situations where this need is actualized.

Using games in the process of teaching one can increase the efficiency of learning due to the involuntary (latent) acquisition, hidden impact on the motivational bases of learning. At the same time it is possible to decrease external (defensive) motives of learning by way of the closed and psychologically safe nature of the play, as well as the functional pleasure it provides.

The so called didactic or educational games can be distinguished from the ordinary ones by the presence of a clearly formulated educational task. At the same time they differ from the educational activity because of having special rules at least part of which go beyond educational activity.

Computer games belong to the class of efficient didactic games. They create educational space with highly organized structure, multimodal means of displaying information, efficient feedback abilities, and repetitive game loop which motivate students.

Language teaching computer games used in teaching foreign languages incorporate the properties of ordinary games, as well as didactic games, language games, and computer games. The parameters of their classification are: interaction nature; localization of motivating factor; number of players; educational tasks; relationship between the game structure and the teaching material; initial purpose and ways of game design; means of visualization; ways of answer coding; ways of answer input; speech operations as objects of acquisition; major cognitive operations as a means of acquiring speech operations.

There are three ways to design language teaching computer games. The first way is to transfer non-computer language teaching games to the computer environment. The second way is to transform language exercises into a computer game. And the third way consists in introducing teaching tasks to the structure of an ordinary computer game.

Keywords:

Didactic computer games, language teaching computer games, language teaching computer games design.