Gameful L2 learning design: Implications from the wilds

Date / Time

January 28, 2022

3:00 pm - 4:30 pm

Categories

Jonathon Reinhardt (University of Arizona)

Millions of people around the world play video games in languages in which they have little or no proficiency (often English) because they enjoy gaming. Leveraging a range motivations, affinities, and literacies, they “L2 game” successfully and learn the additional language incidentally in order to play. What strategies do these player-learners use, and what do they recommend to others who want to learn other languages by playing games? What implications are there for teaching languages with games, and for designing games for language learning? In this talk I’ll explore some learnful gaming strategies suggested on Reddit and Quora forums by L2 gamers (Reinhardt, 2019; Reinhardt & Han, 2021). Informed by what we know about SLA and L2 pedagogy, I’ll then extrapolate what implications there are from these suggestions to “gameful L2 learning design,” that is, how we might design “wraparound” activities to teach with vernacular (i.e., non-educational) games in language classrooms, and how we might design educational games for language learning.

Additional details and Zoom link at ling.uic.edu.

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