Investigation of the Affordances that an Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) Provides in the Aspect of English Learning

• Main Authors: Ching-yu Tammy Hsu, 許沁渝
• Other Authors: Hao-jan Howard Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/33531755379344480665

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語學系 === 101 === The present study aims to investigate the speech acts that language learners frequently produce and receive in the MMORPG world, the effectiveness of learners’ vocabulary learning in the MMORPG world, and learners’ perception of the adoption of MMORPG for second language learning. There are ten participants in the present study. All of them finished 16 MMORPG gameplay tasks individually and eight of them went on to play in a group play with other players. To have a comprehensive look into the language input and output in the MMORPG world, participants’ produced speech and the fluent English speakers’ produced speech were analyzed and compared. To evaluate participants’ vocabulary gains, participants were invited to take the vocabulary pretest and posttest. To triangulate the findings, participants were required to finish the questionnaire of their perception of the use of the MMORPG for language learning. The major findings are presented as follows. One of the most dominant categories of speech acts in the interaction is Representatives, which functions to fill the information gap between one and another. The current study further identified the importance of its subcategory reporting on actions, which was frequently produced to achieve coordination and close cooperation between group members. Another principal category is Expressives, and its dominant subcategory is expressing excitement and emotion. This speech act was carried out through the frequent use of exclamation words and emoticons. Incongruent with previous studies, the percentage of Negotiation of meaning is rather low and the percentage of Language specific corrections is zero, which showed that the real commercial MMORPG (instead of adapted MMORPG for education), may not be able to cultivate students’ ability to negotiate for meaning and to receive or provide language corrections. Another difference between the previous and the present study is that in the present study only the fluent English speakers were found to assume the dominant roles such as commanders, information or opinions providers while in the previous studies not only the native English speakers but also the advanced language learners were found to be able to play various kinds of active role. This showed that language ability might still influence the roles learners assume and the speech they produce. The participants were shown to make significant progress in the performance of vocabulary tests. Taking a closer look at the correct rate of each word, it is shown that participants tended to learn words that described the avatar’s real-time action and words that appeared with impressive image annotation. In the post-experiment questionnaire, participants reported that they made progress in English reading ability and colloquial English ability. Their vocabulary size and motivation for English learning increased as well. The participants generally hold a positive attitude toward the adoption of the MMORPG for language learning.