COMPUTER-AIDED LANGUAGE LEARNING: SELECTION CRITERIA FOR DIGITAL GAMES IN TEACHING ESL AT A HIGHER SCHOOL

Abstract

With the focus on teaching ESL vocabulary and developing speaking skills, the article considers the issue that ESL learners could improve their language proficiency while playing video and online computer games. The paper aims to study the issue under review in the context of informatization and gamification of education by determining the criteria for selecting computer games for the Humanities who study English as a second language. The purpose is to present the ways of integrating computer-mediated methods into ESL learning and examine the effect they have on the learning process and learning strategies, and the students’ perception of the learning experiences afforded by gaming resources. It justifies that information and communication technologies, whose didactic possibilities were immediately appreciated by educators and adapted to their own advantage, may get an effective means to sort this problem out.In particular, the article gives a detailed account of the criteria met by computer-mediated games, that are, in their turn, will be used to optimize teaching English as a foreign language to German and French majors. These include the genre of the computer game, requirements for the technical side, game content and didactic requirements. The criteria highlighted in the article are of practical significance due to their possible use in selecting computer games for their further integration into the process of ESL learning.