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Exploiting adventure video games for second language vocabulary recall: a mixed-methods study

ABSTRACT Although adventure video games have been identified as effective tools for education, few studies have examined the usefulness of such games for language learning. The present classroom-based investigation, therefore, examined the possibility of exploiting commercial adventure video games for improving vocabulary recall of second language learners by designing pedagogical supplementary materials. In so doing, 30 lower-intermediate English as a Foreign Language students were randomly assigned into two control and experimental groups. Both groups took a pre-test consisting of a list of words from an English adventure game The Secret of Monkey Island – Special Edition™ to determine the words they did not know. All the students took two post-tests containing the extracted unknown words: one examining their immediate receptive and one testing their delayed productive vocabulary recall. The results indicated that the students who played the game significantly outperformed the learners in the control group on both post-tests. The players expressed positive perceptions toward the game and reported it as helpful for language learning in general, and vocabulary learning in particular. The findings suggest implications for language teachers, learners, materials writers, and syllabus designers to employ these games as interactive multimodal supplementary tools for language education.