Game communities and Second Language Learning

Ang, C.S., Zaphiris, P., Wilson, S. (2005). Social Interaction in Game Communities and Second Language Learning. The 19th British HCI Group Annual Conference. Edinburgh, UK

Many current researches (e.g., Cruz, 2007) mainly focus on the educational benefits from what is going on in the game. The emergence of the language-heavy digital games provides educators opportunities to benefit language teaching and learning by playing the game itself.

However, Ang et al (2005) argue that “the educational opportunity in computer games stretches beyond the learning activities in the game per se”. Most players do much more than just playing games, rather, they download guidelines from the internet and participate into online forums to talk about games. “Game communities” are formed as an inevitable part of the game play, especially in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs).

Ang et al (2005) note that there are two types of game communities: in-game community (e.g. in-game chatting and joint task) and out-of-game community (e.g. the creation of written game related narratives and fan sites).

The special aspect of this article is that it talks about game communities, especially out-of-game communities, from the perspectives of language learning. There are some studies (e.g., Yee, 2002b) on the social interactions in the gaming environment, but their main focus is on how social interaction plays a role from the perspectives of engagement and motivation, in an in-game community. Hence, this article attracts me as an ESL/EFL educator.

I have reviewed an article of Thorne et al (2007) in my blog somewhere, which describes a multi-lingual intercultural dialogue between two gamers, Meme (a novice player) and Zomn (Ukranian, an experienced player). The case study in this article is a good evidence to support Ang et al’s (2005) “game communities” from the language-learning perspective. Two players established a good relationship in the in-game community first. Meme asked for help from his Ukranian friend about how to say something appropriate in Russian, and two players both use some language pragmatic competences (such as requestiong for help) to promote communication between them. More importantly, an enduring friendship has been established to continue out-of-game social networks. Meme showed a strong interest in starting Russian language courses to better communicate with Zomn.

On the other hand, Ang et al (2005) classified computer game communities into three categories: (1) Single Game-Play Community - refers to a community formed around a single player game; (2) Social Game-Play Community - refers to multiplayer games which are played together in the same physical location; and (3) Distributed Game-Play community - refers to the online multiplayer game in which multiple sessions of game are established in different geographical locations. The Figure 1 clearly illustrates these three types of game communities (Sorry for the obscure picture, please go to the article to see the clear one if you want :) .

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Rankin et al. (2006) point out that social interaction is “a prerequisite to students’ language proficiency”. This article briefly introduces the “game communities”, as a form of social interaction in the game. The details of how language learning is promoted in the game communities have not been discussed in the article. Therefore, this article could serve as a call on more future researches on this issue, from the perspective of language learning. I would like to search more on studies of the role of game communities in language learning.

References:

Ang, C.S., Zaphiris, P., Wilson, S. (2005). Social Interaction in Game Communities and Second Language Learning. The 19th British HCI Group Annual Conference. Edinburgh, UK

Cruz, J. Q. (2007). Video games and the ESL classroom. The Internet TESL Journal, XIII (3).

Rankin, Y. A., Gold, R., & Gooch, B. (2006). Playing for keeps: Gaming as a language learning tool. Retrieved April 7th, 2008, from http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1180000/1179340/a44-rankin.pdf?key1=1179340&key2

Thorne, S. L. & Black, R. W. (2007). New media literacies, online gaming, and language education. Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research, 8.

Yee, N., (2002b) Ariadne – Understanding MMORPG addiction. Retrieved April 14, 2008 from: http://www.nickyee.com/hub/addiction/home.html.