University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Masters Theses Graduate School 5-2011 There’s an App for That: Foreign Language Learning Through Mobile- and Social Media-Based Video Games Trenton Edward Hoy [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes Part of the Applied Linguistics Commons, Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons, First and Second Language Acquisition Commons, French Linguistics Commons, and the Instructional Media Design Commons Recommended Citation Hoy, Trenton Edward, "There’s an App for That: Foreign Language Learning Through Mobile- and Social Media-Based Video Games. " Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 2011. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/883 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Trenton Edward Hoy entitled "There’s an App for That: Foreign Language Learning Through Mobile- and Social Media-Based Video Games." I have examined the final electronic copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Master of Arts, with a major in French. Sebastien Dubreil, Major Professor We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance: John Romeiser, Ron Taylor, Awa Sarr Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Trenton Edward Hoy entitled “There’s an App for That: Foreign Language Learning Through Mobile- and Social Media-Based Video Games.” I have examined the final electronic copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, with a major in French. Sébastien Dubreil, Major Professor We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance: John Romeiser Ron Taylor Awa Sarr Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official student records.) There’s an App for That: Foreign Language Learning Through Mobile- and Social Media-Based Video Games A Thesis Presented for the Master of Arts Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Trenton Edward Hoy May 2011 Copyright © 2011 by Trenton Edward Hoy All rights reserved ii Acknowledgements I would first like to express my gratitude to Dr. Noriko Horiguchi who planted the first seeds in my mind that graduate school was something I should definitely pursue. I would also like to thank Dr. Sébastien Dubreil, Dr. John Romeiser, and Dr. Ron Taylor for not only serving on my thesis committee, but also giving me free reign to go in quite a different direction than most of the French department. Though they may not always have known what I was up to, they were behind me 110%. I owe a great deal to my mother, Dr. Mariea Hoy, for not only her invaluable feedback and advice for nearly every component of this research, but also for the innumerable milk tea and chai refills whose caffeine contribution to this thesis is second only to Weigel’s Mountain Dew slushies. Additional thanks is to due to Ms. Agnès Brihaye and her tireless aid with the French “survey speak” for my original research. Thanks also to my many friends and colleagues, too numerous to individually name, but whose support and encouragement have on many occasions helped me sojourn onward when it all seemed too impossibly difficult or pointless to complete. iii Abstract There is no doubt that the video game industry is undergoing a major upheaval, yet in spite of the recent reconceptualization of video games, educational games as a whole remain the pariah of the industry. Very little has been done in the wake of recent social and industry trends to adapt instruction of academic subjects, especially foreign language, for delivery through video games. Prior studies discussing the potential of games developed specifically for language learning have focused primarily on general principles and have offered no recommendations for platform, genre, or other aspects of design. Through an online survey as well as qualitative analysis of gaming forum discussions and student evaluations of an existing educational language game, this study goes straight to the learners and players themselves in order to determine the opinions and behavioral intentions of potential customers. By synthesizing these insights into consumer demand with theory and industry trends, this study argues that mobile or casual games that are intrinsically social and communicative hold the most potential for success, both in academia and in the industry. iv Table of Contents CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION . 1 CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS . 8 Theories of Instruction . 8 Theories of Foreign Language Education . 11 Second Language Acquisition Theory . 11 Foreign Language Pedagogical Theory . 14 Elements of Game Design . 18 CHAPTER III: STATE OF THE INDUSTRY . 23 History of Educational Games . 23 Overview of Current Educational Games . 25 Assessment of Games Used in Foreign Language Education . 29 Commercial Off-the-Shelf Games . 29 Games Designed for Foreign Language Education . 36 Barriers to Success . 58 CHAPTER IV: METHOD . 62 Research Objectives . 62 Online Survey . 63 Survey Design and Sample . 63 Survey Measures . 64 Sample Profile . 65 CHAPTER V: RESULTS . 68 Research Objective 1 . 68 Research Objective 2 . 77 Research Objective 3 . 81 CHAPTER VI: IMPLICATIONS . 87 Principles of Educational Game Design for Foreign Language Instruction . 87 Recommendations for Game Design . 98 CHAPTER VII: CONCLUSION . 108 LIST OF REFERENCES . 112 APPENDICES . 122 VITA . 145 v List of Tables Table 1. Time Spent Per Day Playing Games on Various Devices . 67 Table 2. Importance of Various Aspects of Gameplay . 69 Table 3. Personal Interest in Foreign Language and Culture . 70 Table 4. Personal Effectiveness of Foreign Language Teaching Tools and Learning Methods . 72 Table 5. Attitudes Towards the Use of Video Games in Foreign Language Education . 73 Table 6. Significant Differences for Serious Vs. Casual Gamers: Aspects of Gameplay . 79 Table 7. Significant Differences for American Vs. French Gamers: Personal Effectiveness of Foreign Language Teaching Tools and Learning Methods . 83 Table 8. Significant Differences for American Vs. French Gamers: Attitudes Towards the Use of Video Games in Foreign Language Education . 85 Table 9. Important Motivational Gameplay Elements and their Language Learning Applications . 105 vi List of Figures Figure 1. Flash Game from DigitalDialects.com – Verb Definitions . 37 Figure 2. Just In Time Translations . 39 Figure 3. TalkMan Travels . 40 Figure 4. Spanish For Everyone . 42 Figure 5. Mind Your Language . 43 Figure 6. My French Coach . 45 Figure 7. Tactical Iraqi . 49 Figure 8. Zon . 53 vii Chapter I: Introduction 5.93 billion. The years that people have collectively spent playing World of Warcraft. 3 billion. The hours people collectively spend playing online games every week. Though some may balk at these enormous figures, denouncing the mind- boggling amount of time “wasted” in a virtual world, games researcher Jane McGonigal has quite a different take. In a 2010 TED Talks appearance, she argued that extended experience within virtual realms can encourage a host of positive qualities and characteristics to an extent that real life could never replicate. “In game worlds we become the best version of ourselves,” she observed, “The most likely to help at a moment’s notice, the most likely to stick with a problem as long as it takes, to get up after failure and try again.” Real world daily life often overwhelms people in ways that leave them feeling anxious, cynical, or frustrated where games motivate and encourage, making players feel that they can achieve everything (McGonigal, 2010). It is no wonder then that playing games is often seen as escapism, but there is far more to the story than that. In the next ten years, the amount of people who regularly play some form of video game is expected to triple, reaching upwards of 1.5 billion people. This extreme growth is due in part to recent technological and social trends which are slowly beginning to reveal the full array of gaming’s positive effects. Many were highly skeptical of Nintendo when it unveiled the Wii. Simplifying graphics and focusing on unproven motion controls? Simply unheard of. The commercial games industry had built itself on the legions of hardcore gamers clamoring for more realistic graphics, higher frame rates, online multiplayer, and other features 1 that push the limits of technology. Targeting people of all ages and levels of video game experience? Commercial suicide. Everyone knew that gamers were a very specific subspecies of humans: young and even middle-aged males still dwelling in family basements, their skin blanched by the near total darkness which constantly surrounds them. Speaking a specialized “leetspeak” language, they execute rapid-fire button combinations with one hand and forage for long-stale cheese puffs with the other. Any video game system that not only aimed for “normal” people but also completely ignored the demands of seasoned game professionals was doomed. The industry was turned upside down when in the first eight days following its November 2006 release, the Wii had sold more than 600,000 units in the Americas alone (Goldstein, 2006). Launch sales broke records in multiple countries and for more than a year retailers couldn’t restock shelves fast enough. Now, four years later, Nintendo has seen its revolutionary gaming system ship 84.64 million units (Nintendo, 2011) while competitors Sony and Microsoft scrambled to jump onto the bandwagon, finally launching their own motion-controlled peripherals in late 2010.