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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2021

Playing with Syntax: Can a serious game help university students analyze noun phrases?

Résumé

In French universities, it is now widely accepted that students majoring in English Studies should be taught grammar. Questions remain as to what should be taught (linguistic awareness or mastery of written/oral skills) and how it should be taught. Using an experimental design, our action-research addresses the latter issue and explores the impact of a serious game on students’ performance and learning experience in two French universities. We targeted a module in which students learn to analyze the structure of the noun phrase in English. 2019/2020 corresponds to the experimental group: the students played a serious game in class. 2020/2021 corresponds to the control group, the game being replaced with an equivalent but non-playful activity. We present preliminary quantitative and qualitative results on student feedback and exam papers. We included three variables: Skill 1: identifying the head noun Skill 2: delineating the phrase Skill 3: segmenting and labeling pre- and post-modifiers We considered each skill to be acquired if a student gave the correct answer for at least 5 out of 6 items. Skill 1 was acquired by 93% (203/218) of students, Skill 2 was acquired by 53% (115/218) of students, and Skill 3 was acquired by 66% (144/218) of students. We relate these encouraging results to student feedback, arguing that a serious game can sustain motivation over an extended stretch of time. More generally, games can be an effective alternative when Task-Based Learning and Teaching is not an option for developing abstract skills such as formal syntactic analysis.

Domaines

Linguistique
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Dates et versions

halshs-04131802 , version 1 (17-06-2023)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halshs-04131802 , version 1

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Hélène Josse, Marine Riou. Playing with Syntax: Can a serious game help university students analyze noun phrases?. 15th ESSE Conference, ESSE, Aug 2021, Lyon, France. ⟨halshs-04131802⟩
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