Nowadays, researches are paying more and more attention to the educational potentials of mainstream video games, including in the aspect of language learning. As a Chinese citizen, I am very interested in looking at this issue from China’s perspective. I spent several days doing the searching work on the internet, but I was disappointed for finding few researches that study on the issue of video games and China’s education.
In my personal experience as an EFL teacher in a middle school in China for three years, I have never used any video games in the English teaching in my classroom. Instead, I concentrated on classroom activities/games to assist my students’ English learning. Although classroom games are the effective approaches to support the second language acquisition, many current researches (e.g., deHaan, 2003) show that mainstream computer games have more potentials to scaffold language learning in terms of motivation, interaction, situated learning, etc.
Fortunately, I found a piece of industry news which presents a project of connecting American and Chinese players in MMOGs (Multiple Players Online Games). Professor Edd Schneider and Zeng a student of Information Communication Technology ran a study in 2005, showing that “online gaming can be used to teach English to Asian teens”. Based on this theory, therefore, they decided to start the project to connect American kids and Chinese kids together in MMOGs.
In my personal experience as an EFL teacher in a middle school in China for three years, I have never used any video games in the English teaching in my classroom. Instead, I concentrated on classroom activities/games to assist my students’ English learning. Although classroom games are the effective approaches to support the second language acquisition, many current researches (e.g., deHaan, 2003) show that mainstream computer games have more potentials to scaffold language learning in terms of motivation, interaction, situated learning, etc.
Fortunately, I found a piece of industry news which presents a project of connecting American and Chinese players in MMOGs (Multiple Players Online Games). Professor Edd Schneider and Zeng a student of Information Communication Technology ran a study in 2005, showing that “online gaming can be used to teach English to Asian teens”. Based on this theory, therefore, they decided to start the project to connect American kids and Chinese kids together in MMOGs.
The purposes of this project are two: (1) Sell MMOGs to China market: many Chinese parents disagree with game play. They consider it as a waste of time. However, if parents see their kids learning English with American kids by playing games, the China market of video games might be open. (2) Help Chinese kids to learn English.
The project has run well so far. They made an ESL-friendly server. American students were getting up at 3 am, putting on their headsets and chatting with Chinese students in a high school in Shanghai. The project showed some positive language outcomes of Chinese children, i.e., (1) Chinese students learned a lot of conversational English that they wouldn’t get in normal classes; (2) they gained confidence in English speaking; and (3) they began to understand American culture during the interaction with American kids.
Professor Edd Schneider said they plan to put together a summer camp as the next step of the project. They are looking to connect high school students in America and China. And I think the best thing is that they plan to help kids to develop long-term relationships, starting in 9th grade until they graduate. As discussed in my last post, language learners get benefits not only from the game per se, but also from game communities, especially out-of-game communities. I believe there will be amazing results from this follow-up long term project. And I hope Professor Edd Schneider could analyze the project outcomes from the perspectives of both playing game itself and in-game communities & out-of-game communities.
Although this is industry news, I believe the project reported in the news would play a role in changing Chinese parents’ and educators’ attitudes toward computer games. I hope it would not only open the door of China market, but also open the door of China education to accept video games, but in a careful manner.
I look forward to seeing the updates of this project, and I will go to look for the study Professor Edd Schneider and Zeng did in 2005. I hope there will be more researches on the implementation of video games in Chinese school settings in the near future.
References:
deHaan, J. (2003). Learning Language through Video Games: A Theoretical Framework, an Evaluation of Game Genres and Questions for Future Research. Retrieved April 16, 2008 from http://jobfunctions.bnet.com/whitepaper.aspx?docid=127390
Gamasutra (2007) Q&A: Using World Of Warcraft to Teach English? Industry News. Retrieved April 16, 2008 from http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13341
3 comments:
Hi Jiao,
This is a great follow-up article to the game-communities posting. I read that one too. I wonder as with this article how willing the American students are to "correct" Chinese students when speaking English when they make a grammatical error such as using the wrong verb tense (The dog run instead of the dog ran.)
Connecting students together as described to help Chinese students learn English is wonderful and I think this is very beneficial! Do you think that American kids learned any Chinese from the exchange? This is a great example of how technology helps us connect with others in ways never considered before.
The summer camp sounds like a great idea. Is this where the students will meet face-to-face or only maintain a virtual relationship?
:) Garnette
Hi Garnette,
Thanks for your reply.
I believe American kids could learn some Chinese from Chinese kids. For me, this project is like a virtual "Two-Way program", in which there are two target languages, and language learners learn from each other.
However, a flaw of "Two-Way Program" in reality is "language status". I guess this flaw would also exist in this project if the objective is to help learners of both side learn English/Chinese. I mean Chinese kids are more desirable to learn English than American kids to learn Chinese, because of English is more powerful than Chinese nowadays. Therefore, the result might be more English outcomes.
By the way, the summer camp is only in a virtual world. What a pity :)
Best, Jiao
Hey Jiao,
Thanks for the information! I'm so excited to read the news, though it's a piece of "old" news in 2007. But I didn't encounter the research by Professor Schneider before. The research would be very useful for my dissertation too. I'll check if I can find some info. about this professor. Maybe I should contact the professor to know more about their research. Summer camp is also one of my initial ideas about my dissertation. But there would be some problems with the access to the camps. I interviewed one ELI student from China and he plays WoW a lot. I guess Wow is really worth exploring.
Also, I believe the educators in Chibou High School must be very open-minded. In fact, I guess it is no so easy to persuade teachers and parents to believe kids can learn English playing games.
Btw,I'm surprised to see that the American students in the study would get up at 3am to chat with the Chinese students. Would that be possible? However, it makes more sense the professor thinks Asian parents would be glad if their kids get up to learn English at 7 am.:-)
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