The impacts of gamification and the use of educational games in english language classes

TOEFL IBT oral production

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to analyze the potential impact of gamification and the introduction of educational games on the motivation and linguistic proficiency of English language students over a 16-hour TOEFL iBT: Oral Production course at a public State University of Paraná. Among the course members, 2 graduate students actively participated in the data collection. During classes, diverse elements of gamification were combined with selected educational games that included group work, competition, development of oral skills in the foreign language, quick thinking and decision making. To analyze the motivational impacts, at the end of the course, a questionnaire was applied on students' perceptions about the gamified practices and the games used in the classroom. For the analysis of language proficiency, an analysis of lexical improvement was conducted using the interactive database English Profile from recordings of the same test performed at the beginning and at the end of the course. The results show that students believe that gamified classes and the use of educational games positively helped in the learning process regarding motivation, engagement and self-confidence. In turn, the analysis of the recordings pointed out that there were no significant gains with regard to the linguistic improvement of the students’ oral production. We conclude that although gamification proves to be an efficient didactic strategy in relation to student involvement, it is necessary to expand research and didactic experiences that can support more in-depth data in the field of foreign language teaching.