Testing ImmerseMe with Chinese students: acquisition of foreign language forms and vocabulary in Spanish

Abstract

Abstract The use of video games in the foreign language classroom is becoming an emerging tendency. This paper aims at analysing how the serious video game ImmerseMe influences the learning of Spanish as a foreign language within a group of 22 Chinese students. This research was conducted through an experiment that included testing participants’ progress (group 1) before and after completing a five-lesson plan using the aforementioned video game, this being compared with a group of 26 Chinese students (group 2). Based on the content of the selected lessons, the main purpose of this test was to determine the participants’ initial level and then assess their progress considering the mistakes that they made regarding the word order structure, lexicon, grammar, spelling, and content. The results have shown that all the participants in group 1 progressed in the second test after completing the lessons through ImmerseMe, and their performances were generally better than those of group 2. In conclusion, it seems that the use of serious video games such as ImmerseMe can be a useful tool in the educational field of foreign language learning and teaching.