Abstract:
Nowadays computers are increasingly being incorporated into school curriculums and serious games are occupying the educational games markets. This article addressed the integration of serious games as tools for learning and teaching English in Iranian schools to zero-beginner students. An experiment was concluded using Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) to investigate the effectiveness of using serious games; namely, Mingoville English as an educational aid and also to examine parents, students and instructors’ attitudes towards using serious games. To this end, 60 female students were chosen and divided into two groups. The control group was taught in the conventional way and the experimental group received the educational aiding material Mingoville, a web-based serious game program, as the treatment. The results of the analyses revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group as the method of teaching was changed. The study also showed the willingness of children, their parents, and teachers toward using such games. It can be concluded that using serious games such as Mingoville can be regarded as an effective tool in teaching English to Iranian EFL children at schools and language institutes. The study can benefit teachers and heads of institutes to add serious games as aiding instructional materials to their English classes.
Machine summary:
An experiment was concluded using Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) to investigate the effectiveness of using serious games; namely, Mingoville English as an educational aid and also to examine parents, students and instructors’ attitudes towards using serious games.
Keywords: Attitude, CALL, Iranian EFL children, Mingoville English, serious games Introduction In the third millennium, where technology is the basis of each and every action and children tend to spend most of their time playing computer games, there is a chance for teachers to use CALL as an opportunity to employ the potential capabilities of digital games and serious games in language classes.
These studies and similar research studies have emphasized that utilizing serious games could be innovative and effective procedures in the teaching environments related to school children and can help the educators to create situations in which the language is meaningful and beneficial.
In order to investigate the instructors’ attitudes and willingness towards using Serious Games as an educational aid in their classes, a 10-page survey questionnaire developed by Christensen and Knezek (1996) at Texas Center for Educational Technology University of North Texas, was adopted and administered to 17 English instructors teaching in Isfahan institutes including the instructor participating in the main study.
The results showed that about two third of the parents and almost all students liked the idea of using computers and especially serious games like Mingoville as an educational aid in teaching English to children.
The findings are in line with those of Ruphina and Liu (2011) on the potential integration of Mingoville game program for learning English as a foreign language in two primary schools in China.