The Effect of Interactivity with a Music Video Game on Second Language Recall
The previous article suggested that multimedia presentation of vocabulary is beneficial to language acquisition. However, in this article deHaan, Reed and Kuwada indicate that the nature and intensity of student interaction with multimedia impacts both vocabulary learning and recall.
In their study, deHaan et al compared students' vocabulary recall as players of a music video game or as observers of the same video game.
Their results suggested the following:
Their results suggested the following:
- Video game players recalled significantly less vocabulary than game watchers.
- Video game players perceived game vocabulary as more difficult than game watchers.
- Extraneous cognitive load of game interactivity seemed to disrupt vocabulary learning.
- Both players and watchers forgot significant amounts of vocabulary during the study.
The dominant purpose in using video games as a basis for vocabulary acquisition is increased student motivation; principle 5.
However, the study identifies additional specific instructional implications which echo other principles of vocabulary instruction:
However, the study identifies additional specific instructional implications which echo other principles of vocabulary instruction:
- Consider the input through careful game choice, pre-teaching or brainstorming game vocabulary; principle 1.
- Create communicative output such as cloze, sentence creation or game play tips; principle 2.
- Draw student attention to morphological, phonetic, syntactic or collocation elements of game language; principle 3.
- Direct student application of strategies such as repeating levels, taking breaks between sessions, using notes, dictionaries; principle 4.