scholarly journals Learner interaction in a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG): A sociocultural discourse analysis

ReCALL ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Game Play ◽  
Language Classes ◽  
Role Playing Game ◽  
Language Output ◽  
Interactional Features ◽  
Massively Multiplayer

AbstractThis exploratory study investigates the linguistic and social interaction of four intermediate EFL learners during game play in a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). Twelve illustrative episodes drawn from the participants’ text chat, collected in four 70-minute sessions held over a one-month period, are analyzed from a sociocultural perspective. Qualitative analysis reveals the presence of interactional features associated with the development of sociocultural competence. Throughout this study the learners successfully engaged in collaborative social interaction involving dialogue, conducted exclusively in the target language. Participants made appropriate use of politeness involving greetings, informal language, small talk, humor, and leave-takings, as a means to support the operation of collaborative interpersonal relationships. These relationships appeared based on reciprocity, friendship, and teamwork. They were effective in facilitating the creation of a low stress atmosphere characterized by social cohesion that was conducive to co-construction, and the consistent production of coherent target language output. The data indicates that the learners were able to jointly establish, and maintain, states of intersubjectivity through the use of continuers, and requests for assistance relevant to in-game tasks. Learner feedback was positive, and suggests that although the participants found the game play challenging, as this research progressed they became increasingly comfortable as their familiarity with the game increased. Aspects of participation identified by the learners as beneficial included opportunities for risk-taking, enhanced fluency practice, and exposure to vocabulary not normally encountered in regular language classes. The analysis suggests that the game provided access to an environment conducive to forms of collaborative target language use and social interaction identified as beneficial in the sociocultural account of language development.

scholarly journals Analysis of Context Dependence in Social Interaction Networks of a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game

PLoS ONE ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. e33918 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seokshin Son ◽  
Ah Reum Kang ◽  
Hyun-chul Kim ◽  
Taekyoung Kwon ◽  
Juyong Park ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Context Dependence ◽  
Interaction Networks ◽  
Role Playing Game ◽  
Massively Multiplayer

Friends and Rivals

2015 ◽  
pp. 1597-1620
Author(s):  
Kristin M. S. Bezio
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Social Community ◽  
Human Emotion ◽  
Role Playing Game ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
The Way

This chapter explores how through both narrative and gameplay mechanics, BioWare's 2011 digital role-playing game Dragon Age II seeks to help players redefine their understanding of ethics in terms of human emotion and interaction. These interaction-based ethics are the product of our desire to situate ourselves within a social community rather than on an abstract continuum of universal “right” and “wrong.” The ambiguity contained within the friendship-rivalry system factionalizes Hawke and his/her companions, forcing the player, as the group's leader, to ally with one of the two sides in the game's overarching conflict. This coercive mechanic produces awareness in the player of the way in which interpersonal relationships form our responses in ethical situations, and causes the player to question whether their decisions are the product of “pure” ethics, or the consequence of deliberate or unconscious submission to the ethical mores of others.

A Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game and Its Effects on Interaction in the Second Language

2018 ◽  
pp. 367-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuttakritta Chotipaktanasook ◽  
Hayo Reinders
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Role Playing Games ◽  
Role Playing Game ◽  
Massively Multiplayer

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have been dramatically used in language education and identified in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) research as playing a central role in second language acquisition (SLA). This chapter addresses the integration of a commercially developed MMORPG Ragnarok Online into a language course as a basis for digital game-based language learning and reports on its effects on second language (L2) interaction. Thirty Thai learners of English who enrolled in a 15-week university language course were required to complete 18 face-to-face classroom lessons and six gameplay sessions. Learners' language use in both text and voice chats during gameplay was recorded and analysed to measure the effects of the game. The findings show that participating in MMORPG resulted in a significantly more considerable increase in L2 interaction that used a wider range of discourse functions compared with English interaction in the classroom. The authors discuss some of the theoretical and pedagogical implications of these findings.

scholarly journals Bring a Foreign Language and Its Cultures to Saudi EFL University-Level Classrooms

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
Ali Ayed S. Alshahrani
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
English Language ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Psychological Variables ◽  
Language Classes ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Actual Learning ◽  
English Program

This study aims to investigate the effects Twitter has as a social networking platform on the development of Saudi EFL psychological variables (attitude, confidence, motivation, interest in L2 culture, social interaction and engagement), actual learning outcomes and the relationship between these psychological variables and their results. Twitter provides a valued accessible window to the target culture and promotes cross-cultural competence and comprehension that is focused on meaning rather than form, as well as repeated exposure to L2 cultural products, practices, perspectives and the target language. A sample of 39 students enrolled in an English course during the second semester of the 2014-2015 academic year, as well as two non-native English speakers (NNSs) working at the English Program, agreed to participate in the study. It adopts a combined inductive-deductive research approach to fulfil the research purpose and answer the research questions. The findings of this study underscore the latent use of the Twitter microblogging platform in EFL classes, as well as revealing the positive impact upon Saudi EFL students’ social interaction (engagement), enthusiasm and interest in learning more about L2 culture in English language classes.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document