Abstract:

The pedagogical use of digital games is gaining popularity and increasingly affecting L2 learning (Godwin-Jones, 2014), while findings support the hypothesis that they improve learners' L2 acquisition (Sykes & Reinhardt, 2013; Cruaud, 2018; Dehghanzadeh et al., 2019, among others). However, the use of games in teaching remains limited due to a lack of understanding of how students learn through play (Ferguson et al., 2019).

This study examines the technical and pedagogical viability of Astronautes FLS, an educational mobile game, as well as learners’ perceptions of the game as a learning tool. In designing the Astronautes FLS game, a lexicon of the 5,000 most frequent words in French (where each 1,000 words determined by frequency of use constituted a "proficiency level") was selected to allow learners to practice what they already know in an automated manner (Nation & Newton, 2009). As the level increases, the vocabulary and pronunciation become more complex (in terms of word frequency and pronunciation difficulty). Therefore, players must be both intelligible and fast at speaking in order for their teammates to successfully receive and interpret instructions within a predefined time frame. The game focuses on receiving or conveying meaning and encourages players to interact through meaningful activity (working together to pilot a spaceship) and practice French. The game also features a practice mode that can be used as a technological listening and repetition activity. This mode gives players the opportunity to choose vocabulary lists at different levels of difficulty and listen to recordings of these words. They can also record themselves and compare their own recordings with those in the game.

Thirty-two participants were recruited for the study, stratified among two groups based on their proficiency in French (A2 and B1+ levels according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). After a two-week period of vocabulary/pronunciation practice and game-playing, each group was invited to play in a group session so that the researchers could observe their interactions with their mobile devices and peers. Adopting a mixed-methods approach for data collection and analysis, we report the results of game-playing observations, survey analyses and focus group discussions, and discuss implications for L2 learning, particularly in mobile-assisted settings.

Keywords:

Digital gaming, French as a second language, L2 speaking, L2 listening.