The Effects Of The Interactivity In Computer Language Learning Games On English Vocabulary Acquisition

According to the constructivism learning theory, in second language acquisition,students’ language is not imparted by teachers, but constructed and acquired during theircommunication and interaction with their environment in a given context in virtue ofothers’ help and the necessary learning materials. So interaction and communication ofthe language learners with other students, teachers and their own environment is veryimportant for their learning and growing up. However, in college English learning andteaching, teacher-centered language teaching and learning method has been applied toEnglish learning and teaching for so many years, which has resulted in the lowefficiency of students’ English learning, especially with the increase of students’population in China. This method also defies the constructivism learning theory andreverses the learning subject in language learning, and causes the language teaching andlearning time-and energy-consuming. What’s worse, this language teaching methodimpedes the initiative and inner motivation of the students in English learning, whichare keys to the success of English learning. Therefore, the interactive language learningand teaching approach is introduced to supplement the side effects of theteacher-centered language teaching method.With the fast development of computer and software technology, multimedia-basedlanguage teaching and learning have become popular in modern college Englishteaching and learning. At the same time, the human-computer interactive languagelearning method has been treasured among college English teachers and researchers. In2007, the Teaching Model of College English Curriculum Requirements stipulated bythe Higher Learning Agency of the Education Ministry states that “the teaching modelshould be built on modern information technology, particularly network technology, sothat English language teaching and learning will be, to a certain extent, free from theconstraint of time or place and geared towards students’ individualized and autonomouslearning”.As one of the human-computer interaction software, computer game has attractedattention from language teachers and researchers because of its popularity among thestudents, and they are also actively exploring the computer game-based Englishteaching and learning method and have made a lot of achievements in this field, some ofwhich has been applied to English learning and teaching. Meanwhile, the author found that most of the researches are focused on the “FLUE” quality of the computer games,which it is said can provide the inner motivation for the English learners, and thusconcluded the superiority of computer game-based language learning. But the basicquality-interactivity of digital games hasn’t been explored in regard to the outcome oflanguage learning and teaching.Based on the experimental comparison and supplemented by the self reportquestionnaire and interview, this study aims to find out the effects of interactivity ofEnglish Learning games on the outcome of the English vocabulary acquisition. Theresearch result shows that the overloaded interaction with English learning games notonly has negative effects on the outcome of English vocabulary recall, but also makesthe players who take more interaction in the experiment less inclined to learn theEnglish vocabulary with English learning games. The author also analyzes the causesbehind the negative results by combining the finding and the interview results withtheories of cognition load, second language acquisition and game-based learning inorder to provide some suggestions and inspirations for the game-based English teachingand research.