Digital Board Game: Is there a need for it in language learning among tertiary level students?

Noor Azlinda Zainal Abidin,P.J Soh,Nabila Abdul Malek,M.A.A Mohd Salleh,Rosnani Ismail,Nurul Nadia Muhammad,Zuraina Ali,C.B.M Rashidi,S.A Aljunid,K.N.F Ku Azir,Mohd Amir Izzudin Mohamad Ghazali

doi:10.1051/matecconf/201815005026

Abstract

The concept of learning while playing to learn language is a pedagogy that can enhance students’ learning interest. In this digital era, the use of board games, for instance, has provided a solution to learning a language. A considerable literature has grown up around the theme of digital board in language learning. Therefore, this paper aims at finding the significance of developing a digital board game for the purpose of vocabulary learning. Fifty-seven (57) students from Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP) were selected as samples using purposive random sampling to collect data for the current study. A questionnaire was employed to explore their needs of a digital board game to learn vocabulary. The findings revealed that digital board game has significant needs among students to learn vocabulary, and further support the idea of using digital board game in language classroom. Majority of them believed that digital board game may provide a significant impact on vocabulary learning. Overall, the current study proves to be particularly valuable to language teachers to incorporate digital board game into their instructional activity. Also, these findings suggest a role for interactive learning in motivating language learner to enrich their vocabulary size.

Highlights

It is a challenge for educators to keep the students’ learning interest
The participants provided positive feedback when asked on their views on the use of a digital board game in their language learning
These results are in accord with a previous study as they found that the incorporation of digital content into language learning can increase the students’ vocabulary size [5]

Summary

Introduction

It is a challenge for educators to keep the students’ learning interest. Learning while playing is one way that helps students to become passionate in their learning. It helps to stimulate their interest in learning. The use of conventional board games is seen much beneficial to students as it is engaging them in playing while learning. Learning a language can be at ease with the existing games which are digitized. From learning the language in various skills such as reading, speaking, listening or writing, digital board games can be used to learn vocabularies of a language. This study, explores whether or not there is a need of using digital board game in learning English, vocabulary among tertiary level students

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