EFL Learners’ Behavior States and Academic Outcomes during Playing Games Strategy

Abstract

To identify the impact of playing games on the achievements of EFL learners, a quasi-experimental design study was applied for 4 weeks at an elementary school in Saudi Arabia. This study examines the impact of playing games in enhancing EFL students’ English skills ability in learning English as a foreign language context. In particular, this study purposes to investigate the impact of playing games in comparison to traditional learning in learning English skills on the achievement of EFL learners and their behavioral states during playing games. The participants in this study were 52 male pupils, aged 12-15 years, level six at an elementary government school in Al-Baha City. According to the results from the post-test obtained they highlight statistical variances between the average scores from the EFL learners who were taught English within the learning method of playing games and the control group taught English using traditional learning methods. The variances favored the experimental group nevertheless the findings in the pre-test score suggested there were no statistical variances amid the EFL learners in the first group and those in the other groups in the achievement of English.Furthermore, the observation findings indicate that the EFL learners in the experimental conditions displayed more playing together behavior states and less playing individually on-task behavior states, non-playing together behavior, and off-task behavior than their classmates in the control condition.