The impact of gamified morphology interventions on student language learning engagement and achievement

Abstract

Morphological awareness (MA), the ability to reflect on and manipulate the smallest language units within a word, has been identified as a crucial reading-related skill that relates to students’ word reading and reading comprehension. Digital gamification is emerging as a popular approach to engage learners and facilitate learning. However, few studies can be found that have investigated the use of gamification to teach MA. Furthermore, little is known about how different types of gamification affect students’ learning engagement and performance. Three interrelated studies were conducted with Chinese students who learn English as a second or foreign language. Study 1 examined the effective components of morphology interventions and contrasted three programs, namely derivational and compounding morphology program (CDM), derivational morphology program (DM) and business-as-usual program. The results showed that the two morphology interventions led to significantly higher gains on MA than the business-as-usual approach. Furthermore, the CDM program led to higher gains in MA and multisyllabic word reading than the DM program. The results showed the benefits of incorporating compounding morphology into morphology programs. Study 2 examined whether an online gamified English MA programme was more effective than physical face-to-face instruction in terms of cognitive, motivational and affective learning outcomes. This MA program included the instructions on both derivational and compounding morphology. Self-determination theory was applied to gamification design and the instructional design theory “First Principles of Instruction” was applied in the development of online MA activities. A quasi-experimental design was employed with a sample of 33 students in the gamified MA programme and 49 in the face-to-face programme. The results showed that the intervention group performed significantly better than the control group in MA and intrinsic motivation. No differences were found for word reading, reading comprehension or affective engagement. The qualitative analyses of the interview responses revealed in detail the students’ perceptions of gamified learning. The findings provide evidence for the beneficial effects of gamified learning experiences in terms of cognitive and motivational outcomes in comparison to face-to-face instruction. Study 3 moved beyond the simple comparison of gamification and non-gamification approach and examined the impact of different ways of implementing gamification on students’ engagement and learning. Study 3 aimed to examine the effects of competitive, cooperative and collaborative types of gamification on student learning engagement and performance. The quantitative results indicated students in the competitive condition significantly outperformed their peers in the cooperative condition on MA, word reading and reading comprehension. They also had higher gains in MA than students in the collaborative condition, although these two groups showed similar improvement in far-transfer measures (i.e., word reading and reading comprehension). Concerning engagement, qualitative data collected from student interviews suggested gamification contributed to their behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement. The qualitative data also reflected the possible reasons for the quantitative results. Taken together, the three studies showed the benefits of incorporating gamification in language learning settings as well as in what contexts gamification showed better results.