The Effectiveness of the Game LINGO Online: A Serious Game for English Pronunciation
In this chapter an evaluation of the LINGO Online, a serious game for English pronunciation is described. The game is applied in two primary and two secondary schools in the Netherlands. During 8 weeks of experiment, students from the schools either playe
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Keywords English pronunciation Serious gaming istics Game characteristics Learning outcomes
Student learner character-
W. Trooster (&) S.L. Goei Windesheim University of Applied Sciences, Zwolle, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] S.L. Goei VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands A. Ticheloven Windesheim University, Utrecht, The Netherlands E. Oprins G. van de Boer-Visschedijk G. Corbalan M. Van Schaik TNO, Soesterberg, The Netherlands © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2017 Y. Cai et al. (eds.), Simulation and Serious Games for Education, Gaming Media and Social Effects, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-0861-0_9
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Abbreviations I.T. Information technology OMT One minute test VAST Voice activated spy tech
1 Introduction In Dutch education, more and more curriculum time is spent on English language. Dutch students used to have their first lessons on the English language in secondary education (starting at the age of 12). Nowadays, pupils already have English lessons in primary schools, at the age of 10 [29]. There are primary schools offering English lessons even for pupils at the age of 6 [6, 21]. Recently, the Dutch Ministry of Education [5] issued legislation that offers opportunity (not obligation) for primary education to use English language as the leading language during part of the time in the curriculum on English language. At this moment, focus is primarily made on communication in English language lessons. English pronunciation is not an official curriculum topic in The Netherlands [10, 24]. Therefore, as only in a minor part of English lessons, and English pronunciation is conducted mostly in groups, in which the students are asked to practice via verbal phrases in an interview format as prescribed by the textbook used. Little attention is paid to pronunciation at the individual level. Once or twice a year students give an oral presentation in English. Only on these occasions teachers give feedback on the individual student’s English pronunciation. While learning correct English pronunciation is important; teaching time spent on English pronunciation remains limited due to the packed curriculum. Another bottleneck is that teachers, especially those at the primary school level, often do not have the skills to evaluate English pronunciation and to deliver appropriate feedback [19]. This study focuses on the role of e-learning in educational innovation. Information Technology could help the use of available curriculum time more effective and efficient [1, 9, 17, 25, 26]. E-learning using IT has the potential to overcome the problems described above. In fact, software for personal computers and mobile devices is already being used in language courses [2, 3, 12, 18]. What relatively new is the use of games in education [31]. The so-called serious games are effective in a broad domain of skills, cognition and attitudes [4, 7, 15, 16, 30]. Serious games are digital games that are developed not only for fun and entertainment, but also for educational p
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