Hello all,
As usual, I found this week´s articles really interesting. As language instructors, we can always get ideas to implement in our language classes. I really liked the title of the article by Daniel A. Castañeda & Moon-Heum Cho (2016). Therefore, it was the first one I decided to read. In it, its authors discuss about the use of a game-like application on a mobile device to improve accuracy in conjugating Spanish verbs. As a Spanish teachers, it was interesting for me to read about the study.
Samanta offered a very good discussion about the aforementioned article. However, we all noticed that the authors should have presented it in a better way and should have added information that they did not. Personally speaking, I don't have a lot of personal experience with games and language learning. I have used some of them sometimes, but I have not taken them too seriously. Nevertheless, since I have never learned a language with difficult verb conjugations in a serious manner, I wanted to see the results and conclusions that the article presented, but, again, it was a little bit disappointing.
My personal conclusions after the readings and the discussion, however, are that games can be a necessary element to incorporate in a language learning curriculum. Nevertheless, they should be well integrated with other components. The reason why I think so lays on the fact that we need to cater for any kind of learner. Nevertheless, I would like to read more articles about them.
What do you guys think?
Alexandra Lopez Vera
As usual, I found this week´s articles really interesting. As language instructors, we can always get ideas to implement in our language classes. I really liked the title of the article by Daniel A. Castañeda & Moon-Heum Cho (2016). Therefore, it was the first one I decided to read. In it, its authors discuss about the use of a game-like application on a mobile device to improve accuracy in conjugating Spanish verbs. As a Spanish teachers, it was interesting for me to read about the study.
Samanta offered a very good discussion about the aforementioned article. However, we all noticed that the authors should have presented it in a better way and should have added information that they did not. Personally speaking, I don't have a lot of personal experience with games and language learning. I have used some of them sometimes, but I have not taken them too seriously. Nevertheless, since I have never learned a language with difficult verb conjugations in a serious manner, I wanted to see the results and conclusions that the article presented, but, again, it was a little bit disappointing.
My personal conclusions after the readings and the discussion, however, are that games can be a necessary element to incorporate in a language learning curriculum. Nevertheless, they should be well integrated with other components. The reason why I think so lays on the fact that we need to cater for any kind of learner. Nevertheless, I would like to read more articles about them.
What do you guys think?
Alexandra Lopez Vera
Hello Alexandra,
ReplyDeleteAs always, I like to read your post and compare it with my thoughts. As you mentioned, I also decided to choose this article because it is related to our field of study and teach. Unfortunately, it was disappointing because the article could have shown more information There is missing information about all the quizzes that they conducted, peer learning, etc. Nevertheless, we know how difficult it is to write a paper.
In my experience, I have never used an app to just conjugate verbs. I was thinking that we can do research about the imperfect tense and preterit tense using a conjugation app. What do you think?
Best,
Samanta.
I think it is an awesome idea!!! :)
DeleteAlthough the study by Castañeda and Cho was methodologically flawed, I appreciate the idea of using games to motivate learners to practice what is ultimately rote memorization of forms. Imho, anything that gets learners to spend time with a new language can be valuable, even for learning simple vocabulary or grammatical forms. But we can't overestimate the power or the affordances of technology and need to be realistic about what it is that technology facilitates and what the learners themselves must do.
DeleteHello, Alexandra! I liked the article as well. However, there are some flaws as Sam and Dorothy mentioned before. As we talked in class, I don't know if the app conjugating verb might be that effective if it only gives the correct answer and it doesn't explain why the student is making that mistake. I liked the fact that the articles we are reading in this class help us to improve our teaching and bring brand new tools to use it, but I might confess I offer some resistance to it.
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