An Action Research on Game-Based Language Teaching and its Effect on L2 Learners’ English Achievement

Abstract

The aims of the study are to know how much of an impact do visual, aural, and kinesthetic games have on students‘ achievement at Darab junior High School in Sari, Iran. John Heron and Peter Reason's Cooperative Inquiry was implemented to get the participants more involved and find the shortcomings of the book that needed to be remedied the most. The procedures used were planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. It was done in two cycles throughout eight sessions. We used collaborative action research with another English teacher. 

In collecting the data, the instruments were interview, observation, questionnaire, and test, the test is only given to students, and the rest of the instruments administered to both teachers and students. The result of the study showed that the average scores of the students reached up to 86%, 81% and 76% differing an at least 9% from the control groups average scores that were 68%, 71%, and 67% respectively.  

Therefore, the criteria for success had been determined. It is crucial to note that games have contributed a positive impact on not only the learning process but also implies that they enhanced students‘ enthusiasm and motivation. Clearly, they improved our students‘ active participation, confidence, and capabilities in their language skills. In short, it can be stated that game-based teaching creates good, enjoyable circumstances and reduces the boredom and stress of the learning process. 

Keywords: action research, game-based, visual, aural, kinesthetic, learning 

Introduction 

Children learn through exploration and play much more easily and efficiently rather than the conventional method during their early years of development. Opportunities to learn in this manner drastically change as children mature. 

"Experiences that allow children to explore and play to learn will develop creative and critical thinking which is essential to their academic success" (Davies et al., 2013; Holmes, Li den, & Shin, 2013; International Association for Development of the Information Society, 2012; Won & Han, 2010). 

As technology advances and new equipment are introduced to the educators, different opportunities for creating unique learning experiences such as games arise that can be built into their lesson plan. To do so, educators need to analyze previous researches concerning the implementation and effectiveness of game-based teaching. The purpose of this literature review is to explore the use of game-based teaching in a junior high school classroom to determine its effect on students‘ academic achievement. 

Planning 

1 Literature review 

No matter how different kids are old or young, girl or boy, athletic or not; they all tend to like playing games and group activities. Not only does it affect how much they participate, but also games have shown to have a great deal of influence in their learning process.  

Recent reviews have paid well-deserved attention to exploring different ways of turning students into active participants in the lesson instead of being passive learners. The more students do to understand something on their own, the less they will need further explaining and when students figure something out by themselves, they feel a lot happier and more confident to keep on rather than being obligated to practice. Therefore, for students to actually want to be a part of the class, we need to find something they are familiar with such as games and turn it into educational material.  

"Game-Based Learning works because of the engagement that comes from putting the learning into a game context" (Prensky, 2001, p.147). Users get to experience theory and explore new ideas in a new environment. Learning does not only have to occur in an educational setting. People gather information consciously or subconsciously while interacting with a media source such as computers, video games, or even television programs. 

Games also attract many users with different learning styles and intelligence. "Each learner‘s intelligence profile consists of a combination of relative strengths and weaknesses among the different bits of intelligence: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalistic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and (at least provisionally) existential" (Gardner, 2006) (Koran, S., Kornhaber, M., Gardner, H., 2006, p. 23). Most games are designed with visual and auditory skills in mind" (Gee, 2007, p.24). The visual and audio interface provides a robust source of information to which the human brain quickly interprets and responds. Other bits of intelligence are also present in some games. The versatility of game development and available resources provide game users with a variety of multiple intelligence experiences. 

The reason most people want to learn a language is to be able to use it in real situations, for example when traveling. Games can be a very good way to practice these skills because they can easily be used to reenact various situations from real life and provide students with practice in their fluency. In addition, by using games in the classroom, the teacher is giving his students a bigger role, and he himself is stepping out of the frontline, which is a positive thing because it allows students to take on more responsibility. Furthermore, it allows students to do more on their own, and that can very well result in an increase in their confidence level. (Langran & Purcell.1994. p.12-14). 

Games are good for shy students and students with low confidence, and that applies specifically when playing takes place in smaller groups because then they get a chance to speak in front of a fewer audience instead of having to express themselves in front of the whole class. Besides, it is sometimes easier to open up and forget the shyness when playing a game because the atmosphere is not as serious and more emphasis is put on fluency rather than grammatical correctness. (Langran & Purcell.1994. p.12-14). 

Using games in the classroom is important because many children do not get enough opportunity to play during their free time, which can be traced back to the rapid changes in our society. Cities are getting bigger and traffic is getting heavier which means that more and more parents are hesitant to let their children play outside. Also, passive activities such as watching television or the computer screen are seen as being more exciting than actually physically playing, so today the sight of children playing various games in groups outside is becoming much rarer than it was 10, 15, or 20 years ago. This is not a good development, and it can have several bad consequences for our society. One possible consequence is that the lack of movement can cause health problems because even though not all games are physical some certainly are (Masheder.1989.p. 3). Another consequence this change might have is decreased social skills because, according to Piaget, children‘s games reflect society and that by playing games children learn many of society‘s rules and regulations (Cole, Cole & Lightfoot. 2005.p. 536). 

Games have always had a way of communicating with kids that can never be replaced. Aydan Ers?z (2000) states that: "well-chosen games are invaluable as they give students a break and help them practice language skills. Games are highly motivating since they are amusing and challenging at the same time. Furthermore, they employ meaningful and useful language in real contexts. They also encourage and increase cooperation". 

2 Methodology and work plan 

A classroom action research (CAR) was used in this study for the first method. "The primary reason for engaging in action research is to assist the "actor" in improving and/or refining his or her actions" (Sagor, 2000). The participants of the study were the English teacher and 25 students from the ninth-grade of Darab Junior High School of Sari, Iran. 

It was aimed to reveal students‘ difficulties in learning vocabulary, especially with visual games as it was stated by Kurt. L, CAR that ―type of classroom research carried out by the teacher in order to solve problems or find answers toward context-specific issues (Tampubolon, 2009). 

Based on these considerations, in this study, we used collaborative action research in which we cooperated with one of the English teachers of Darab Junior High School in Sari. The teacher acted as an observer while we acted as teachers who taught by using 3 games. The teacher was an active participant who was not only functioning as an observer but also taking actions by making a lesson plan and giving assessment. Then, he helped us collect and analyze the data.  

The first game was created to help students through visual stimulation to introduce and practice new words facilitating the learning process of students who are more inclined to learn with visual material.   

Step 1: Introducing words with pictures like the picture to the left 

Step 2: Arranging the word that represents the picture like a matching game  

Step 3: Pictionary to practice more and work on students‘ production  

Materials Required: Cards, board, marker 

Activity Time: 10 to 15 minutes 

Concepts Taught: New vocabulary 

Objectives: 

1. Students will be able to link between the new words and pictures and images of them. 

Here are some examples: 

Easy: book, car, tree 

Medium: movie, snow, light 

Difficult: open, shout, slow 

Very difficult: surprise, clean, throw 

The Second game was designed for the purpose of helping students that learn better by doing things meaning the more efficient way of teaching them is through kinesthetic activities. 

Materials Required: Fly swatters, chalk, chalkboard 

Activity Time: 5 to 10 minutes 

Concepts Taught: Alphabet practice 

Objectives: 

1. The student will be able to match the written form of a letter of an alphabet with the letter's pronunciation. 

Step 1: Based on action commands given (sit down and stand up), they should play and when they make a mistake they‘re out of the game  

Step 2: the remaining have to choose out of a group of actions (mostly verbs) to display and their partners 

should guess (like a game of Charades or guessing games) 

Step 3: Once they guess right, their partner has to display another one and everyone has to guess the answer 

Step 4: The Fly Swat game is our review and final step, and is nice to play at the end of a lesson introducing new subject material. Using PowerPoint (or merely write on the board), prepare a slide full of vocabulary words sprawling all over the page. Have a series of definitions and questions about these vocabulary words ready to read to the students. To make it extra fun, write the words on pictures of flies! 

Split the class in half and be prepared for a good time. Each team sends up one person to the front of the classroom and they are each given a fly swatter. Read the question aloud, and then the first student to swat the answer on the board wins the round! Fly Swat is one of the best ways to review vocabulary while getting the whole class away from their desks and physically engaging in an activity. 

The third game was for students who prefer learning through sounds and music (aural), trying to better engage them and increase their achievement in the test afterward.  

Step 1: Listen to the audio without the transcript 

Step 2: Transcripts are provided and students are asked to listen to the audio and fill as many gaps as they can  

Step 3: Choose a sport and their partner has to name as many words related as they can  

 Step 4: Students write as many of the words they heard from their partners 

The audio is attached here.

Materials Required: speaker, notebook 

Activity Time: 15 to 20 minutes 

Concepts Taught: Vocabulary and Reading 

Objectives: 

1. Students will develop their listening and speaking skills. Their comprehension skill will be improved. 

After implementing the classroom action research in the ninth-grade students of Junior High School, we conducted 6 posttests (3 with the control group and another 3 with the treatment group). The interviews with 4 student-teacher were also carried out to know their responses in regard to the implementation of the research. At last, the third questionnaire was administered to know the students‘ responses towards the implementation of the aforementioned games. 

Questionare 1

3 The Context 

Darab Junior High School 

Sari, Iran 

Firstly, we faced many complications trying to develop educational games for a group of different individuals since we needed to make sure that the games were relevant to the subject or that if they fit our students‘ age. We also kept in mind to select games that were not too complicated because they could potentially result in students‘ loss of interest, or even defeat. 

Secondly, the fact that most of their families had financial issues made our job a lot harder since they were not familiar with what we were trying to do. Moreover, the lack of audiovisual equipment limited our resources to a great extent. 

Thirdly, classroom interaction is one of the main factors that can facilitate the students‘ language development and different methods have been put into practice to enhance students‘ engagement. However, establishing a relationship with our students in order to get them to interact more often in the activities despite their previous background in school took a lot of time. 

But fortunately enough, using games to teach interested them in the subject immensely; which in turn attracted them to do even more outside the confines of the classroom. 

Action & Observation 

4 Data collection 

 In order to evaluate the intended material for modification into games in terms of being motivating or effective enough, we developed different questioners for students and teachers. Then we collected more information about what they felt was absent in their books by interviewing the students. After gathering additional information from some of the more experienced teachers about what they thought was left off from the material or their students needed more, we organized the information into four main categories. 

First and foremost, as stated in (Larson & Marsh, 2005, loc. 1888) "What tends to go unrecognized are the existing practices students bring to school that are multimodal and highly sophisticated technologically" digital media and games play a big part in our students‘ lives nowadays. Therefore, games or presentations developed for the content could become an essential part of our class. Unfortunately, the circumstances in our school, which was an ordinary state-run school, were obviously less than ideal since our use of games was restricted by the resources that we had at our disposal there. However, the majority of schools in Iran are working in the absence of such audiovisual equipment. Nevertheless, we worked on a different solution and possible ways of using the resources we had to our students‘ advantage. 

Secondly, students tend to respond to visual material more excellently as Margaret Walsh explains in (Walsh, 20 10, p. 24-25) "Instances of youths' out-of-school digital literacy proficiencies have impacted pedagogical practices in schools where the image is slowly replacing text and students increasingly learn curriculum content visually". However, the authors of the Prospect books series have paid little to no attention to the authenticity, appropriateness, and attractiveness of the pictures. 

It is evident that learning is more effective when sensory experiences are stimulated since students learn best by observing, listening, and copying what they have seen or heard. English for Schools books has provided a CD for the above-mentioned reason. However, the audio material developed for the book was either unavailable or hard to get for most of the class and it was not the only problem we faced trying to use audiovisual aids to teach. The audio was not recorded with native speakers and had risen the question of authenticity as well. 

Last but not least, teaching vocabulary in context has proven to be so much more effective than teaching vocabulary in isolated lists, but the context should be real and authenticate which Prospect books have not been able to deliver. Regardless, we need to provide our students with ample opportunities to learn words in their actual context, which we later focused on finding words that were either in groups or chunks to help establish a relation for our students between them. 

5 Data analysis 

The results showed that about 64 percent of the students of 7th grade of junior high school in Darab were not happy with their schoolbooks. Considering they had no prior experience with any other book, this is a high level of dissatisfaction with the book. Many of the students could not relate to the pictures of the book because of it being not authentic or outdated. Seeing as 75% of them were not content with the book‘s design, some changes were necessary to be made to bring the students‘ attention back to the lesson. 

As laid out in the chart below, not only were the students unhappy with the visual material of the book but also their teachers could see that it had little to no positive effect on their students.

The audio materials were not easily accessible for 78 percent of the students and about 68 percent of them believed that the materials were not useful or effective for them.

Almost half of the students liked vocabulary tasks, which we later on focused as our main approach for teaching with games. Speaking and reading exercises were the second and third most-liked book exercises. Also over 13 percent of them chose grammar practices and other exercises as their favorites.  

The students pretty much liked the same English exercises of the book and of the English language learning. The data also showed that a significant number of students were interested in group activities as well.  

After careful consideration of the textbooks‘ biggest shortcomings and working on different games that could be most effective in each part, three sample games were implemented with 12 students as the treatment group with the previously explained plan and 13 students in the control group that was taught with the standard methods of our collaborating teacher, Mr. Mehraeen. 

The first game implemented had an 18% higher average score from the control groups‘ posttest; from which it could be concluded that visual games were an effective tool used to make up for what the textbook lacked. The more active game also showed a good result of a 10% better average score than the control group.  

Unfortunately, the aural game had a lot less than anticipated improvement in students‘ achievement and average scores. Although it showed a solid 9% higher average score than the control group, what could only be because of the neglection of the importance of listening skill by our education system and its textbooks resulting in very weak students in terms of listening which even our game failed to compensate their disregard of this skill. 

6 The findings 

 According to the data gathered from various students and teachers, the package developed for the research showed a significant rise in the score and students‘ engagement and helped them to learn more efficiently. 

Not only did every one of the students displayed at least 15 percent of improvement in posttests, but also they were more self-confident and encouraged to learn English. They showed a lot of enthusiasm toward changing their approach in the class reportedly.  

Appendices 

3 Questioners (2 for students [One to find the shortcomings of the book and the second to see how they enjoyed playing the games], 1 for teachers) 

3 Posttests (1 standard test for the parts the games were designed to improve) 

3 Posttests (1 for each style of learning) 

6 Interviews (2 professors and 4 student-teachers) 

6 Class Transcripts 

3 Game Packages (developed specifically for the research)  

Note: Because of the lack of access to students in schools due to the outbreak of Coronavirus (COVID-19), two of the questionnaires and two of the posttests were implemented online through porseshnameonline.com services 

References 

1. Heron, J. 1996. Cooperative Inquiry: Research into the human condition. London: Sage. 

2. Reason & Bradbury, Handbook of Action Research, 2nd Edition. London: Sage, 2007. 

3. Lewin, K. (1946) Action research and minority problems. J Soc. 

4. Griva, E., Semoglou, K., & Geladari, A. (2010). Early foreign language learning: implementation of a project in a game-based context. 

5. Multiple Intelligences Oasis, Howard Gardner 

6. Patersonová, K. (1996). P?ipravit, pozor, u?íme se! Praha: Portál. 

7. Lee Su Kim. (1995). "Creative Games for the Language Class" 'Forum' Vol. 33 No 1, January -, Page 35. 

8. Aydan Ersoz. (2000). "Six Games for the EFL/ESL Classroom" The internet TESL. Journal, Vol. VI, No. 6. 

9. Walsh, 20 10, p. 24-25 

10. Guiding School Improvement With Action Research by Richard Sagor 

11. Larson & Marsh, 2005, loc. 1888 

12. Cole, Cole & Lightfoot. 2005.p. 536 

13. Masheder.1989.p. 3 

14. Langran & Purcell.1994. p.12-14 

15. Chang, Wu, Weng, & Sung, 2012; Meluso, Zheng, Spires, & Lester, 2012 

16. Koran, S., Kornhaber, M., Gardner, H., 2006, p. 23