Aimee Kwon
Type: Lab
As language teachers increasingly recognize that digital games motivate learners, scholars argue that some games incorporate mechanics that offer noteworthy affordances, or opportunities, for language learning (Gee, 2007; Sykes & Reinhardt, 2012; Reinhardt, 2019). However, not all games are designed equally, and employing games in the language classroom effectively requires knowing which ones might be well-suited and why, how they might be adapted and supplemented for formal instruction, and how learner gaming experiences and dispositions towards “gameful” learning play a role in their reception. Participants learned how digital games are used for the very serious activity of language learning. Insight comes from research on gameful teaching and learning as well as from analysis of “learnable” L2 gaming practices in the Internet wilds. Grounded in these insights, this talk presented a framework of “gamefulness” for the design, evaluation, and implementation of digital games for language learning and teaching.
Jonathon Reinhardt, Ph.D. (Penn State) is an Associate Professor of English, Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at the University of Arizona. His research centers on the relationships between the theories and practices of technology and computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and teaching, especially with emergent technologies like social media and digital gaming. He is the author of Gameful Second and Foreign Language Teaching and Learning (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2019) and is the current president of CALICO, Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium.