Replay: o uso da gamificação em aulas de língua inglesa como estratégia para aquisição vocabular

Abstract

With access to digital telematic technologies, teachers can use new technologies to make the teaching-learning process more meaningful and in line with the daily lives of learners who are part of the digital culture. One way of bringing technology into the school context is to use the language of digital games through the gamification of teaching, which involves using the mechanics, thinking and design elements of games in contexts unrelated to the games themselves with a view to motivating participants (Leffa; Pinto (2014). With these considerations in mind, this work aims to investigate whether gamification provides engagement in English language learning in an 8th grade elementary school class.how to involve and encourage English language learning through gamified activities. The research involved fourteen students from an 8th grade class at a municipal school in João Pessoa who were given a vocabulary pre-test based on the VKS model by Wesche and Paribakht (1997), before taking part in gamified activities using the Kahoot! Quizlet, Genially, Lyrics Training and Gimkit tools. The vocabulary pre-test showed that of the 31 target words, only 34.33% were known by the students. After the intervention with gamified activities, we found a percentage increase of 22.81% of the words recognized. It was possible to measure a real gain in the students' vocabulary acquisition. The results improved significantly for most of the lexical items tested and no item regressed to the pre-test level. A more subjective gain was a positive change in motivation. When faced with the results, the students were able to accurately observe the gains they had made in the lexical field when compared to the vocabulary they had at the beginning of the unit.