Out-of-school digital gameplay and in-school L2 English vocabulary outcomes

The aim of the present study is to examine the relation between out-of-school digital gameplay and in-school L2 English vocabulary measures and grading outcomes. Data were originally collected from a sample of 80 teenage Swedish L2 English learners and comprise a questionnaire, language diaries, vocabulary tests, assessed essays, and grades. Using an observational post-hoc design, three Digital Game Groups (DGGs) were created based on frequency of gameplay: (1) non-gamers (0 h/week), (2) moderate gamers (<5 h/week), and (3) frequent gamers (≥5 h/week). Results show that DGG3 had the highest rated essays, used the most advanced vocabulary in the essays, and had the highest grades, closely followed by DGG1, while DGG2 trailed behind. For the vocabulary tests, DGG3 was followed by DGG2 and DGG1, indicating that gameplay aligns more directly with vocabulary test scores than vocabulary indicators drawn from essays. Due to the gender distribution of non-gamers (predominantly girls) and frequent gamers (exclusively boys), a subsidiary aim is to investigate how gameplay correlates with outcomes for boys and girls: significant correlations were found for gameplay–vocabulary tests/English grades for the boys.

"While the study design does not allow for any claims of causality, there is a clear pattern: on several measures of L2 English vocabulary, the frequent gamers (DGG3) scored highest followed by the non-gamers (DGG1) and the moderate gamers (DGG2). Evidently, frequent gamers show the strongest results for all vocabulary measures. It is particularly noteworthy that they have the highest mean scores of polysyllabic types as well as own polysyllabic types in the essay, which shows that these learners are able to produce advanced vocabulary in a high-stake examination. Of the examined groups, DGG3 has the best results for lexical richness. Interestingly, although DGG3 also received the highest essay grade when the three DGGs were compared (thereby also corroborating findings in Olsson, 2011), they wrote shorter essays than DGG1, even though it should be noted that this difference was non-significant.... Since all three DGGs were on par with one another in terms of the overall grades (p = .993), it is noteworthy that the learners in DGG3 in 9th grade were awarded higher English final grades as compared with the learners in DGG1 and DGG2 (p = .104; η2 = .058).... As regards the grades in English and progression over time, there was only negligible improvement for DGG2. In contrast, both DGG1 and DGG3 improved significantly." (Authors, 73-74)