Tertiary Students' Experience with Digital Language Games for Enhancing the English Language

Recently, digital games are used as a form of new media with massive potential for learning the English Language. To understand the typology of user experiences with digital games, the Presence-Involvement-Flow Framework (PIFF) was utilized. A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten tertiary students in Northern Malaysia. Participants were asked to download and familiarize five digital language games (Duolingo, Memrise, Word Connect, Word Domination and Word Tower Puzzles) before the interviews. Thematic analysis technique was used to analyze the responses. The study’s thematic network comprises four global themes (Game Structure, Feelings, Skills Gained and Prerequisites) and seven organizing themes (Instruction, Game Design, Positive Emotional Outcome, Negative Emotional Outcome, Soft Skills, Technical Skills and Skills Required). The result is expected to be a good guideline or research framework for practitioners and researchers in exploring further the concept of user experience with English language digital games.

THE USE OF LANGUAGE GAMES TO INCREASE MOTIVATION IN LEARNING ISTIMÂ’

Factors that cause boredom in learning process are the lack of variety of methods, models, and media. An alternative to increase learning motivation in learning process is by using games. The main problem of this research is how to increase students motivation to make learning outcomes optimized. The purpose of this study was to increase students' motivation to learn istimâ' (listening) in Arabic is by using educational games. This study used classroom action research using a cycle model. The results of the study shows that educational games can increase students' learning motivation, shown by the comparison of initial motivation and after giving an action using educational games. The initial motivation data was in average 42.36%, in the category of low learning motivation, after giving an action in the first cycle it reached to an average 78.33%, high category, and increased in the second cycle with average 93.28%, very high category. The study concluded that educational games can increase motivation in learning istimâ' in Arabic.

Games in foreign language classrooms: Taiwanese students’ perspective

The study has been designed in order to answer the growing demand for systematic implementation of English language games into FL curriculum at the university level. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how Taiwan-based learners perceive the use of games in the classroom. The qualitative data has been obtained from in-depth interviews with three individuals majoring in EFL and Slavic languages. Among the main benefits of game-supported instruction, students mentioned breaking the routine and raising motivation, along with educational aspects related to introducing, reviewing, and testing the material. They also offered guidance for instructors who plan to deploy games in class. Their overall perception was very positive, which allows the conclusion that it is advisable to introduce games to a wider audience of Taiwanese students. If doing so really can raise motivation to master foreign languages and whether it will translate into measurable progress in Taiwanese students’ linguistic advancement is another issue worth future investigation.

Using Language Games to Enhance EFL Students’ Speaking Skill in Indonesia

This research aims at enhancing EFL students’ speaking skill through the use of language games. The research was designed in the form of Classroom Action Research. It was conducted in two cycles and six meetings. Each cycle consisted of plan, implementation, observation, and Reflection. The researchers employed an observation checklist, field notes, questionnaire, and test to collect the data. The main criterion of success of this research was that the students’ scores on the speaking test should achieve a score of 70, and it must be achieved by 75% of the total number of students. The second criterion was that the lecturer’s classroom performance should meet the “Success” category. The results of the first speaking test showed that from 24 students in the classroom, 15 students got scores of 70 or higher. It was equal to 62.5 %. In cycle 2, the total number of students who got scores of 70 or higher was 21. It was equal to 87.5 %. The result of this research indicated that the use of language games can develop the students’ speaking skills

Rifkin’s misreadings of the zero-marginal cost of production of information technology

In this paper, I address contemporary attacks on rationalism thanks to Rifkin’s concepts of “extreme productivity” and “zero marginal cost of production” as examples of an ideological twist on genuine economic expressions. The main issue dealt with epistemological issues in the context of the contemporary communication age. It consists to clarify the relation between economic ideas and their relation to reality. To proceed accordingly, I implement a hermeneutic method applied to Rifkin’s discourse. That method is grounded in the scholarly tradition of “the ordinary language philosophy”. Its results proceed to show 2 distinct language games at work: 1- the neoclassical definition of marginal cost and its own logic is distinct from Rifkin’s use of it. 2- Rifkin uses the expression “marginal cost” under the auspices of an ideological discourse on the demise of capitalism. 3- The confusion is based on a systematically deceptive use of scholarly referencing. I conclude by drawing some lessons for the role of a multidisciplinary defense of economic rationality in contemporary discourse.

Playing platformized language games: Social media logic and the mutation of participatory cultures in Chinese online fandom

This study discusses the shifting dynamics of fan participatory cultures on social media platforms by introducing the concept of “platformized language games.” We conceive of a fan community as a “speech community” and propose that the language and discourses of fan participatory cultures are technological practices that only make sense in use and interactions as “games” on social media platform. Based on an ethnography of communication on fan communities on Weibo, we analyze the technological-communicative acts of fan speech communities, including the platformized setting, participants, topics, norms, and key purposes. We argue that the social media logic (programmability, connectivity, popularity, and datafication) articulates with fans’ language games, thus shifting the “form of life” of celebrity fans on social media. Empirically, fan participatory cultures continue to mutate in China, as fan communities create idiosyncratic platformized language games based on the selective appropriation of the social media logics of connectivity and data-driven metrics.

Givi Margvelashvili's “The Kantakt, from the Reading-Life Experiences of a City Writer” as a Metafictional Novel

Each author happily writes about himself, about the difficulties encountered in writing, about literature, - we read in Roland Duhamel's book “The Poet in the Mirror: About Metaliterature” (Dichter im Spiegel: Über Metaliteratur) [Duhamel, 2001]. This is also the case with German-speaking Georgian migrant author Givi Margvelashvili. In a 2009 German-language novel, Givi Margvelashvili in his book “The Kantakt, from the Reading-Life Experiences of a City Writer” (“Der Kantakt, Aus den Lese-Lebenserfahrungen eines Stadtschreibers”), in parallel with his account of his life, experiences and work, shows the mystery of literary fiction and invites the reader into a metafictional game. Literary critic Patricia Waugh, who plays a special role in the study of metafiction, believes metafictional texts are those that deliberately refer to themselves as an artificial creation in order to raise questions about the relationship between fiction and reality. According to her concept, metafictional texts are created by an infinite linguistic game with the world, reality, fiction, narrative [Waugh, 1984]. In the present article we will try to review the novel “The Kantakt, from the Reading-Life Experiences of a City Writer” by Givi Margvelashvili, the main motives, elements or narrative techniques, characteristic of the metafictional literature, which show the metafictional nature of The Kantakt.It should be noted from the very beginning that Givi Margvelashvili's novel “The Kantakt, from the Reading-Life Experiences of a City Writer” is based on the artistic reality of the German writer Kurt Tucholsky’s - “Rheinsberg - A Picture Book for Lovers” (“Rheinsberg - Ein Bilderbuch für Verliebte”). The Kantakt is an intertextual game with a pretext. The latter appears in the work as a book in a book, which is one of the most common motifs in metafictional literature. Because Tucholsky’s work is often found in the Kantakt, the readers cannot forget it, therefore they constantly think about it, and even compare the pheno-text with the pretext. Naturally, there are many passages in the Kantakt in which we recognize intertextual metafiction.An important metafictional event in the novel is the transformation of the main character of the work - the first "City Writer" of the German city of Rheinsberg into a "reader" character. From the "real" world of the "City Writer" - from the second layer of the novel to the fictional world of the book - the first layer (the same as his own consciousness), the "transition" into the imaginary world blurs the line between "reality" and fiction. This is where one of the techniques of metafictional literature comes into play - metalepsis.The metafictionality of the novel is evidenced by the characters in the first layer, who are aware of their fictional existence. The aim of the "reader" is for the main characters of Kurt Tucholsky’s work to realize their fictional essence too. Because of this, he leaves a message to Claire and Wolf, which is written on a blank sheet of the same book the characters belong to: “This is your mirror-book. It accurately describes how you live through readers: everything you think, say and do here, you think, say and do in your reading-life” [Margvelashvili, 2009:461). In the work, the characters are presented as reading-creatures, whose lives depend on the reader and their imagination. The function of the characters also becomes a subject of discussion in the novel: "The characters in the book are committed to reflect the lives of real people, to serve people as a kind of reading-mirror" [Margvelashvili, 2009:200], - we read in Margvelashvili's novel.Based on the fragments of the life and memoirs of the "City Writer” scattered within the work, which coincide with the life and memoirs of Givi Margvelashvili, we can argue about the biographical auto-reflexivity in the work, which is also one of the forms of metafiction. It should also be noted that there are signs of autofiction in the Kantakt.In the Kantakt, as in most metafictional texts, the character, the reader, and the author are repeatedly thematized, as well as the act of writing, narrating, and reading. The language games in the novel also have a metafictional meaning. Auto-reflexive phrases and words reveal the fictional world of the book, through which often even a parallel is drawn between the fictional and the real world. Linguistic issues, including phonology, morphology, syntax, etc., are thematized and discussed in the Kantakt as a metafictional novel.Based on these and other examples discussed in the article, we can conclude that Givi Margvelashvili's “The Kantakt, from the Reading-Life Experiences of a City Writer” is a metafictional novel, revealing the fictitiousness of this work as well as other literary texts in general, primarily the pre-text of “Rheinsberg - A Picture Book for Lovers”.