Report of a U.S.-China E-Language Project

Green, P.J., Sha, M. & Liu, L.(2011). The U.S.-China E-Language Project: A Study of a Gaming Approach to English Language Learning for Middle School Students. Washington D. C. Traced from: http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html.

     

      This is a report prepared for the U.S. Department of Education on the result of a case study of an U.S.-China E-Language project upon a game approach to English language learning for middle school students.

The project found out that those students in treatment schools with relatively low levels of initial proficiency gained more in reading and listening than similar students in comparison schools. But there were no evidence of differences in performance between treatment and comparison groups among students with higher levels of initial proficiency. More interestingly, the proficiency of students in both treatment schools and comparison schools performed similarly tested at the beginning and the end of the treatment remained the same.

Students in the treatment group reported higher levels of motivation to learn English than those in the comparison schools.

95% of teachers reported that participating this project changed the way they thought about teaching because the teaching approach involving game-playing was learner-centered and interactive by offering students problem-based tasks and immediate feedbacks.

With findings of this project, I interviewed my students who are studying in a university that ranks somewhere from top 20 to 25. Two out of their points attracted my attention. One is that they played games but didn’t feel their English proficiency was thereby improved, which is in correspondence with the finding in this report. The second is, contrasting to the relationship between playing game and the increase of their motivation to learn English, as was reported in this material, my students said that playing games didn’t motivate them to learn English once they grasped the rules to play the game.

If the first phenomenon is the fact, how would theorists explain that? The games were not well designed to assist language learning? Or playing games absolutely doesn’t change players’ language proficiency?

The second point of my students’ indicates that motivation increases learning efficiency but with the fulfillment of players needs on different levels, their motivation level decreases and hereby learning efficiency decreases or simply disappears.