Paper presentation

1. The Effect of Video Games on
Iranian EFL Learners’ Vocabulary
Learning
Sedigheh Vahdat
Shahid Chamran University
Amin Rasti Behbahani
Islamic Azad University
Speakers:
Diego Paredes Cid.
Rocío Vargas Alarcón.
Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción.

2. Introduction.
“One cannot learn language without vocabulary”
(Kang, 1995).
• Video games are a revolution for the English
language.

3. Literature review
• Importance of Vocabulary Learning.
generalservice vocabulary
special-purpose vocabulary
(Nation and Kyongho, 1995)
• context-embedded approach (Kang, 1995)
• knowledge of 2000 to 3000 highfrequency
words is necessary (Zhang and Annual. 2008)

4. • Video-Game Studies
“Play is crucial to learning new skills” (Piaget
1962)
Schlimme (2002) : “the players’ vocabulary
levels may increase”
“video games enhace a learner’s language
acquisition” (DeHaan, 2005)

5. • Brown, Hall, Holtzer, Brown, and Brown (1997)
“They concluded that males perform better than
females in video games, but that both genders
improve significantly in their vocabulary skill
with video-game use”

6. The study.
• General objective:
To what extent do video games help learners acquire vocabulary
over those who acquire vocabulary without using video games?
• Specific objective:
Do females acquire vocabulary via video games better,
or do males?

7. • Participants:
Forty subjects
20 males and 20 females
Ages: from 23 to 27 years old.
Students majoring in English teaching at Azad
University

8. Instruments.
• Simulated TOEFL.
• Forty multiple-choice questions achievement
test.
• Likert-scaled questionnaire.

9. Materials and Procedure.
• The experimental
group used video games
to learn new words.
• The control group used
five text-drill chapters
designed by the
researchers about the
game.

10. Data analysis

11. Data analysis

14. Analisys and conclusion.
• As the results of this study show, video-game
based learning has a strong effect on acquiring
new vocabulary, which confirms what
Schlimme (2002) and Turgut and Irgin (2009)
predicted.
• Repetition in games allows a language learner
to be continuously exposed to the target
language, creating more opportunities for
acquisition to occur.

15. Analisys and conclusion.
• The results of this study also revealed that
there is a highly positive correlation between
gender and learning vocabulary via video
games.
• The results of this study have implications for
designers of educational video games,
teachers, and students. Language teachers are
advised to use video games in their
classrooms, especially for vocabulary building.