Abstract
Game-based vocabulary learning that is well documented to improve students’ vocabulary learning outcomes is gaining increasing attention. However, no consensus has been reached regarding the impact of game-based vocabulary learning application (APP) on the vocabulary learning achievement, motivation, and self-confidence among Chinese EFL (English as a foreign language) students, so large a population that should never be neglected. To address the issues, a total of 70 college students in two groups participated in a quasi-experiment. One is the experimental group in which students received the game-based vocabulary learning; the other is the control group in which students received the conventional paper-based wordlist learning. Each group consisted of 35 students. The experiment was carried out to evaluate how the implementation of game-based vocabulary learning influences students’ vocabulary learning achievement, motivation, and self-confidence. In addition, a regression analysis was exploited to examine the influence of motivation and self-confidence on vocabulary achievement. Results demonstrated that the game-based vocabulary learning APP benefited students in vocabulary achievement, motivation, and self-confidence. Furthermore, learning self-confidence and motivation did not predict learning achievement. Implications of the study were also given.
Highlights
Background of English Vocabulary Teaching inChinese Higher EducationThe rapid growth of Chinese higher education has led to an increase in university enrollment
This study aims to examine the effects of Baicizhan, a popular Chinese game-based vocabulary learning APP, on Chinese college students’ vocabulary achievement, motivation, and self-confidence, adding to our understanding of how gamebased vocabulary learning APP can be implemented in Chinese EFL context
Results of a regression analysis were reported to examine the influence of motivation and self-confidence on vocabulary achievement
Summary
Background of English Vocabulary Teaching inChinese Higher EducationThe rapid growth of Chinese higher education has led to an increase in university enrollment Due to the dilemma between a limited number of English teachers and an increasing number of students, Chinese college English courses, more often than not, take place in the classroom with a teacher-centered fashion (Rao & Lei, 2014). Students are usually instructed to learn English vocabularies of each unit of the textbook in the classroom. Apart from the classroom instruction, to pass the important English test, for example, CET4, students often give rise to the conventional paper-based wordlist learning approach to intentionally learn CET-4 vocabularies with some vocabulary books available Any explicit information (e.g., spelling, lexical interpretations, textual/pictorial presentation of usages, and semantic associations) will be compiled in the wordlist of the vocabulary books (Gu & Johnson, 1996; Yamamoto, 2014)
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