Scholarly Critique - Cycle 1
Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games or (MMORPG’s) are a passion of mine. I have beta tested many, played some until their servers whirred their last, and escaped into their international worlds on many a weekend night. MMORPG play is different for every game, but what they all share is the potential social space for people to come together. I prefer European servers to American servers, and West Coast of America if that is the only choice, mostly due to the wide variety of languages and cultures I’ve encountered. Hence, the interest in this article.
Isara Kongmee, Rebecca Strachan, Catherine Montgomery, and Alison Pickard from Northumbria University – Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, authored an article called Using Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) to Support Second Language Learning: Action Research in the Real and Virtual World. Their premise: to evaluate how the environment within MMORPG’s works as a physical safe environment for English as a Second Language (ESL) students to practice their language skills absent of the controlled aspects of a standard classroom. As a teacher that sees five dedicated ELL classrooms each week and dozens of other students that would fall into this category, I am intrigued by the idea of using an MMORPG to perpetuate a practice space for trying out the language with little pressure to be right as they might feel with a school setting. Also, as a student of Anthropology, I find the potential cultural interactions within MMORPG’s from the perspective of using fellow players as face-to-face practice and cultural immersion in the language to be a useful approach to teaching and learning language.
For this study, Kongmee, et al., performed active research, taking part in the MMORPG’s with the Thai native speakers, using MMORPG’s to facilitate their English language learning in a multitude of ways, both within the games and in the classroom, including having the players use language from the game, including quests and dialogue, as models for their own writing. Socially, the game provided not only a practice place within the game, but also a shared common background of experiences for the students to utilize in their classroom to further reinforce their language acquisition and practice. To me, this seems reminiscent of project based learning, as the learners are immersed within one theme and everything revolves around that set of ideas, the game.
One commonality among many players of MMORPG’s is the concept of using avatars for anonymity. Here “the learners used their avatar names to lower their identity. This helped enhance their confidence and allow them to make mistakes and learn from them,” without fear the mistake would be associated with them personally. (Kongmee et al., p.4) This in turn creates an environment where students have more confidence in utilizing tools, such as game manuals, chat boards, and in game chats with less fear of embarrassment for not having complete command of the language.
Speaking from personal experience, much of the MMORPG community is more than willing to assist novice players as well as non-native speakers in learning a shared passion, the game. Gaming is a universal way to socialize. In that socialization, the students participating in the research project got to experience the best way to learn, pleasure learning. Also, within this method, using MMORPG’s as the teaching tool, students were able to be more self-directed and self-paced, while still having the impetus to work as a team towards in game goals. By doing this, their language skills improved, as evidenced by growth of two levels on the ELLIS language pracment3 test. Each student helping the other ones just by virtue of shared common tasks and language building resulted in more investment in their own learning, better learning engagement, and a system that provides positive reinforcement that differentiates for multiple people.
One thing that struck me as particularly meaningful was how the different characters and character occupations/roles the students chose contributed to their different experiences in language learning. Being the healer in any game requires far more opportunities for player to player rapid communication, while choosing crafting affords a more measured, slower paced opportunity to communicate with buyers. The choice of warrior provided the student more ability to help his language learning peers with real world information pursuit and greater participation through asking questions for his group within the game’s virtual community. As the students changed around the character types they chose as avatars, they expanded their learning and cultural interactions.
There were a few problems I saw within the research study, including small sample size and the researchers being the language teachers as well. Also, there was only one subject’s test scores used as evidence to support their theory. I wonder how the other students performed on the test. Though the evidence is thin, I think their theory, that MMORPG’s are a useful tool for supporting second language learning is sound, though it would benefit from more subject observations and testing. Though I agree with their final conclusion, MMORPG’s are a significant way to facilitate learning used in conjunction with classroom settings, due to insufficient evidence and subject data, I feel they failed to support their theory sufficiently.
