Abstract
This article focuses on the design of digital instructional game (DIG) tasks for young second language (L2) learners. The aim of the study is to identify motivational task elements based on what children respond to positively in games and incorporate into their own L2 vocabulary learning game designs. Eighty-two sixth-grade students (ages 11–12 years) in Japan were first asked to identify game elements by examining existing games and then to design games incorporating DIG tasks of their own and peer-evaluate them. Building on previous work (Butler, 2015), the study uses a mixed-methods approach to examine how both task-intrinsic characteristics and implementation conditions were realized in innovative and engaging DIG tasks by children. Although the study focuses on young learners, the findings might be applied to any type of task, including both digital and physical tasks for adults as well as for children. The article concludes with suggestions for how to design instructional materials which allow individualized learning and encourage autonomy in order to cater to the genuine interests of learners and to invoke intrinsic motivation for learning.
I Introduction
Despite the fact that the number of young second language (L2) learners (up to 12 years old) is growing worldwide, previous studies on task-based language instruction have not given these learners much attention, and it is often reported that young L2 learners tend to lose their motivation for language learning by sometime around the end of primary school (e.g. Carreira, 2006; Lopriore & Mihaljević Djigunović, 2011). This might be partially due to that fact that existing instructional material and tasks designed for young learners ‘often fail to cater to the genuine interests of children and to invoke intrinsic motivation for learning’ (Prosic-Santovac, 2016, p. 1). As young learners engage in playing computer games intensively (Gee, 2007; Prensky, 2001), however, these games are promising sources of information on their interests and factors that intrinsically motivate them.
The present study aims to identify elements of digital instructional games (DIGs) that motivate learners in performing DIG task from children’s points of view (Pinter, 2014). Game and curriculum designers often develop games for children based on their own intuition, which may or may not meet young learners’ interests. As the present study will hopefully demonstrate, the perspective of children can be an important source of information in designing learning tasks and materials for young learners. The study is part of a larger project on DIG design which aims to identify both game and learning elements in DIG design (Butler, 2015). The present article, however, focuses only on game elements by taking a close look at the process and product of learners’ game design through both quantitative and qualitative analyses.
1 Task motivation
Since the 1990s, researchers’ conceptualization of language learning motivation has shifted from viewing motivation as a relatively stable trait that resides in individuals to seeing it as a more situated and dynamic construct stemming from social and contextual factors (Dörnyei, 2001). In line with this newer conceptualization of motivation, task motivation, defined as varying degrees of situated motivation that learners exhibit toward different tasks, has gained attention. According to Julkunen (2001), task motivation essentially concerns ‘the characteristics of the task’ or ‘task design’ (p. 33). Certain characteristics of tasks appear to be more attractive and motivating for learners than the others.
Building on Tremblay, Goldberg, and Gardner’s (1995) distinction between state motivation and trait motivation, Julkunen (2001) suggested that task motivation is composed of two types of motivation: a relatively stable and general motivation and a reactive and temporary motivation to a specific task. Dörnyei and Kormos (2000) argued, however, that task motivation is more complicated than Julkunen’s dichotomous model. In addition to general and task-specific motives, they argued that multilayered motives, such as course-specific motives, can influence one’s motivation to complete the task. Moreover, in interactive tasks, Dörnyei (2002) indicated that task motivation is co-constructed by each participant’s motivational disposition toward the given task.
Incorporating a processing dimension to task motivation, Dörnyei and Tseng (2009) proposed a motivational processing model that is composed of three mechanisms: task execution, task appraisal, and action control. Task execution is considered to be ‘the learners’ engagement in task-supportive learning behaviors’ (p. 119); namely, this is the realization of learning. In their study of a vocabulary-learning task, task execution was operationalized as vocabulary learning achievement and strategic learning behaviors. Task appraisal means ‘the learner’s continuous processing of the multitude of stimuli coming from the environment’ (p. 119) which includes their feelings of satisfaction, skillfulness, and helplessness when it came to their use of learning tactics, as well as self-efficacy for learning in general. Finally, action control refers to ‘self-regulatory mechanisms’ (p. 119). Their model hypothesizes that the three mechanisms had circular relationships.
Approaching the topic from a neurobiological point of view, Schumann (2001) considered motivation to be ‘patterns of stimulus appraisal’ (p. 29). According to Schumann, when a learner perceives stimuli (e.g. class, teachers, tasks) to be rewarding and pleasurable, a neurobiological system – consisting of the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, and body proper – enhances stimulus appraisal, which in turn rests on dimensions such as novelty, pleasantness (attractiveness), goal or need significance, coping ability, and compatibility with self and social image. Observing that people can intensively engage in digital game playing, we can expect that games have elements that potentially evoke players’ positive stimulus appraisal and motivation.
2 Game elements that engage players
While characteristics of games vary greatly, a game can be defined as ‘an artificially constructed, competitive activity with a specific goal, a set of rules and constraints that is located in a specific context’ (Hays, 2005, p. 15). In the game literature, it has been argued that what motivates people to play games is engagement or ‘the quality of an activity that maintains attention and investment by those participants in it’ (Sykes & Reinhardt, 2013, p. 137). Prensky (2001) suggested that games have 12 elements that engage players: games provide fun, play, rules, goals, interactiveness (in action), an outcome (or feedback), adaptability, win states, challenge (e.g. competition, conflict, opposition), problem solving, interaction (socially), and representation (in a story) (p. 106). Other major elements of digital games proposed by researchers include sensory stimuli, speed and actions, and mystery (e.g. novelty and unexpectedness) (Garris, Ahlers, & Driskell, 2002; Wilson et al., 2009).
Engagement is also considered to be a major precursor to flow, a specific state of mind in which players participate in the game tasks with a very high degree of concentration and enjoyment (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004). Flow may be the ‘ultimate manifestation of motivation’ (Sykes & Reinhardt, 2013, p. 97) and may provide a condition for effortless learning (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008), which in turn may play an important role in one’s language development, especially among young learners. In the game literature, flow has been extensively discussed as a mechanism for players’ enjoyment when they engage in game tasks (e.g. Fu, Su, & Yu, 2009).
Despite the potential game elements that engage players in digital games outlined above, our understanding of game elements in DIGs that engage young L2 learners remains limited. Butler, Someya, and Fukuhara (2014) made one of the few forays into the field. They identified motivational game elements among 3,945 Japanese children (ages 4–12) by analysing their DIG-playing behaviors in an online English-learning site. The games that were frequently played by the children provided learners with cognitive challenge, generated curiosity, allowed control, and had multiple player options. Interestingly, games with these elements were not necessarily the most effective for English learning (as measured by an objective proficiency test).
Finally, fantasy has gained attention as a potential motivational element in the game literature. Fantasy has long been considered one of the major sources of intrinsic motivation among young children, and the involvement of fantasy has empirically been shown to be effective in facilitating learning among this age group (Malone & Lepper, 1987; Parker & Lepper, 1992). While there are substantial discussions on the role of fantasy in very young children’s cognitive development (children up to preschool age) (Woolley, 1997), the motivational and cognitive functions of fantasy among school-age children remain unclear.
According to Vygotsky (1978), young children’s creation of imaginary situations, or fantasy, is their conscious realization of their desire to be free from perceptional realities that limit their behaviors. But the role of fantasy changes as children grow. Very young children (e.g. 2.5-year-olds) start with creating imaginary situations that are close to reality. By the time children reach preschool age, concrete objects and physical actions are no longer needed to exercise symbolic activities. By creating and playing amid imaginary situations and being mediated by rules in their play, preschool children can go beyond their daily behaviors, develop abstract concepts of their behaviors, and self-regulate them. Playing in imaginary situations serves as ‘a major source of development’ for preschool children (p. 102). When it comes to school-age children, however, Vygotsky mentioned only that play itself ‘fills a specific role in the school child’s development but lacks the significance of play for the preschooler’ (p. 104). Considering that the game literature finds that fantasy is popular even among games for adolescents and adults (Garris et al., 2002; Wilson et al., 2009), its motivational and cognitive functions need to be further examined. Researchers found that if fantasy elements conflict with the game’s learning goal, learners’ increased motivation with regard to the fantasy elements of the game actually hinders their learning (Malone & Lepper, 1987). The challenge for game and task designers, then, is to identify fantasy contexts that closely relate to the learning goal in order to maximize learners’ learning outcomes.
We must also consider the possibility that today’s children who grow up with computer games have different cognitive styles from older generations, as Prensky (2001) has argued. Among the ways they might differ are that (a) they process information faster; (b) they are good at handling multiple tasks simultaneously; (c) they access information randomly as opposed to sequentially; (d) they experience graphics before texts; (e) they are used to being connected rather than being isolated; (f) they learn by doing (active learning) rather than via passive learning; (g) they consider ‘play as work’ not ‘play versus work’; (h) they value pay-off rather than patience; (i) they prefer fantasy to reality; and (j) they see technology as a friend as opposed to a foe (p. 52). While we certainly need more empirical studies to test the extent to which Prensky’s observation holds true, it is likely that game tasks that are aligned well with learners’ general cognitive styles would more likely cater to their interests and motive them intrinsically. Having children engage in research is critical for understanding game-based learning because children are the main agents of this new learning paradigm.
3 Research questions
In the present study, children took charge of designing DIG tasks. Sixth-grade students worked in groups to design English-vocabulary learning DIGs for fifth-grade peers. The study seeks to understand:
what game elements children identified as being engaging;
how they incorporated them into their vocabulary-learning DIGs;
how they valued the incorporated elements.
Vocabulary learning was chosen for the project because it is a curriculum element that children could conceptualize easily as a goal. Moreover, vocabulary learning which is sometimes seen as boring, rote memorization might be conducted more enjoyably through DIGs (Prensky, 2001).
II Method
1 Participants
Eighty-two sixth-grade students (ages 11–12 years) in a public primary school in Japan participated in the study. They were drawn from three intact classes and constituted all of the sixth graders at the school. Under the Japanese national curriculum (in 2014 when the study was conducted), English was being implemented as an exploratory program in the upper grade levels of primary schools. The English lessons at the participating school had concentrated heavily on oral communication. A preliminary survey verified that all but four of the 82 learners had played computer games. Boys spent an average of 11.1 hours per week on computer games whereas girls spent 2.3 hours. However, there were substantial individual differences in both groups. Approximately 75% of the children had experienced learning by means of a digital device.
2 Procedures
The participating children spent one class period (45 minutes) completing each of the first four steps of the project. Detailed descriptions of the procedures (including lesson plans and instructions) can be found in Butler (2015). The project was carried out by the author, two curriculum development specialists, a professional game designer, and the students’ classroom teachers. The project was conducted in the children’s first language (Japanese), and all whole-class and group discussions were videotaped and transcribed.
Step 1: Identifying game elements that engage players
At the beginning of the first class, the participating children were told that the aim of the project was for them to design computer games in groups that are both attractive and effective in English vocabulary learning. While playing some existing games, they were asked to discuss how and why computer games could be fun and attractive and to identify attractive features in small groups and then as a whole class. The elements identified by the children were recorded on the blackboard by a teacher. They were then introduced to 35 novel English nouns using flashcards. By using this traditional method, we hope to create the need and motivation for children to come up with more enjoyable ways to learn words. As homework, they chose five of the words to learn (i.e. connecting the sound and meaning) and paid attention to how they learned them.
Step 2: Identifying effective learning elements
In Class 2, the children exchanged their learning strategies in small groups and then as a whole class. The identified strategies were recorded on the blackboard. While examining some sample DIGs, they identified how these strategies were incorporated. The professional game designer then illustrated how professionals draw storyboards (graphic representations for organizing and sequencing images) when they design games. This was done so that the children could draw storyboards when they designed and presented their own game plans.
Step 3: Designing games
In Class 3, the children designed DIGs in groups of 5 or 6. This process involved two sub-steps: (1) decide the type of game (e.g. card game, action game), and (2) decide which game and learning elements to incorporate. Each group was given a note sheet for organizing their ideas and recording their results. They used any English words that they liked as learning targets. Each group drew a storyboard on a large sheet of paper for oral presentation.
Step 4: Evaluating games plans
The groups presented their storyboards and answered questions from their classmates. After each presentation, the class individually evaluated the designs against the game and learning elements that they had come up with in the previous lessons. In an open-ended format, they then identified the game and learning elements that were most saliently and strategically incorporated in ways that would make the game both motivational and effective for vocabulary learning. Finally, each class chose the best game designs and the selected games became the target of our case studies.
Step 5: Piloting games with younger learners
The project team developed a game based on the children’s plans and asked students from a lower grade to play and evaluate it.
3 Analyses
The game elements recorded in Class 1 were compared with the elements identified in the previous studies to answer Research Question 1 concerning the game elements learners identified as being engaging. The researcher and two curriculum specialists independently examined the students’ oral presentations and storyboards to answer Research Question 2 concerning which elements were incorporated in their own games. Any disagreements were resolved through discussion. Designs chosen as best by the learners were then further examined qualitatively in order to offer concrete examples of how selected elements were incorporated in the children’s designs and to expand on the initial analysis of the presentations and storyboards. Finally, to answer Research Question 3, the children’s evaluations of their game plans were analysed based on the elements they identified in Class 1 and their discussion in Class 4. Again, the researcher and two curriculum specialists independently coded the students’ peer- and self-evaluative remarks in their evaluation sheets. Any disagreements were resolved through discussion.
III Results
1 Quantitative analyses
a Game elements identified as engaging
In the first lesson, learners identified 16 game elements (see Table 1). The game elements identified by the children in this study included all the major motivational elements addressed in the literature and some novel elements. One of these novel elements was repetition and recovery (7). The role of repetition in learning is well recognized among L2 task researchers (e.g. Bygate, 1996; Lambert, Kormos, & Minn, 2016; Wang, 2014). Importantly, however, the children in this study indicated that repetition is a potential source of enjoyment as well.
Game elements.
Note. Elements with asterisks (*) are the elements addressed by ‘experts’ in the previous research on digital games.
b Game elements incorporated
Table 1 also indicates the number of game designs (out of 15 total) that incorporated each element as well as some examples of how these elements were realized. All the game designs had the following game elements: (1) clear rules, goals, and objectives; (2) outcome and feedback; (3) challenges; (4) sound and visual effects; and (5) speed and time limitations. Many games also included repetition/recovery, fantasy/unreality, and control over the play. Surprisingly, interaction and collaboration were rarely incorporated even though these elements were identified as important in discussions and are often employed in entertainment games.
c Game elements valued
The children’s comments in their evaluation sheets are summarized in Table 2. The numbers under the ‘game elements’ correspond to those in Table 1. Children’s evaluations of game elements varied depending on the game, but some general tendencies can still be seen across the games. Game elements that were most frequently valued by the children included challenge (4), stories (11), fantasy/unreality (8), and control (9).
Students’ evaluation.
Notes. The numbers indicated under the ‘game elements’ correspond to the elements listed in Table 1. Since no child mentioned the elements #15 (convenience) and #16 (stress-releasing), these two elements were excluded from the table. Instead, the ‘others’ category was added. This category includes evaluative remarks on the cuteness of characters and the attractiveness of game titles, and so forth.
Source. Adapted from Butler, 2015.
2 Qualitative analyses
Building upon the previous quantitative analyses (which identified what elements the children used and valued), qualitative analyses were performed in order to understand how game elements were incorporated and how they were valued. Each of the three classes chose the best game design for their group. Two of these game designs are examined closely in this section to better understand how the game elements were incorporated and valued.
Game 1: Fairy tales
Players choose from among 10 fairy tales. They then encounter various English words and learn these words by answering questions related to the stories (e.g. ‘What did the princess find in the castle?’) prompted by audio and pictorial aids. The game uses multimodal functions of the DIGs as well as the players’ existing knowledge of the storylines.
Three subgames (the Mr. Bold Game, the Sugoroku Game, and the English Block-building Game) support reinforce the target words relationships between meaning and sound, meaning and form (spelling), and sound and form, respectively. These subgames all have time limitations and provide players with instant feedback. Players can choose to play them at any time, any number of times, and in any order.
The Mr. Bold Game is composed of a series of meaning–sound matching quizzes. However, as Mr. Bold, the game’s avatar, learns more words, his hair grows. If a player does not play the game every day Mr. Bold loses his hair. This provides a form of feedback reinforcing constant practice. In addition, the avatar’s hair turns gray if the player misses a certain number of points, but the player can dye his hair the color of choice if the player reviews the items and masters them. Based on the frequency with which the children were mentioned in the discussion, avatars seem to be a powerful motivational device for this age group.
The Sugoroku Game is based on a traditional Japanese board game in which multiple players compete by tossing dice. In the version developed by the sixth graders, there is a road divided into small sections. Each section contains a meaning–form matching quiz on target words. Based on a toss of the dice, a player moves while answering the English word quizzes encountered along the way. They compete with the computer on their progress through the sections. If the player misses a question, he or she goes back to the previous section.
The English Block-Building Game was inspired by Tetris, a popular computer game for entertainment. In the version designed by the children, letters of the English alphabet constantly fall down the screen individually and in clusters. As the letters fall, the player begins to hear vocabulary words. The player has to place the falling letters in the correct order to spell those words. Players choose from three levels of difficulty which differ in speed and number of letters.
In this design, fairy tales were employed to provide learners with a meaningful context for the targeted vocabulary. Indeed, judging from peer comments such as ‘people may be able to learn many words without feeling too difficult if they learn them in stories,’ the children seemed to find affective benefit of learning vocabulary in story contexts. In addition, the children indicated that learning stories and fantasies through a foreign language itself was meaningful and fun, as exemplified by one child’s comment that ‘it would be fun to learn different kinds of English when we learn fairy tales from other countries.’ A number of other children also expressed excitement about learning stories and fairy tales from different countries. How imaginary situations (as opposed to more realistic or authentic situations) stimulate this curiosity remains unclear, however.
Furthermore, while the player initially encounters English words in context, this game design incorporates repetition through a playful motivational device (e.g. the avatar). The effectiveness of repetition for learning is widely acknowledged, but the present example demonstrates that it can also be a source of enjoyment as well. In the peer evaluation, learners highly valued encountering the same words repeated in different sub-games, as indicated by one child, who said ‘it is interesting that the same words appear in a little bit different way every time.’ Having a slight variation in the process of repetition appears to be motivating for these learners. Finally, it is left to the player to decide what to repeat, how much to repeat, and what aspect to repeat (meaning, sound, and form). This is quite distinct from the teacher telling the students exactly what to repeat (e.g. ‘Repeat after me’) in traditional classroom teaching.
Game 2: Company presidents’ commute
In this game, players become the president of a company in an imaginary town. The goal is to get to the office on time in spite of a number of challenges (English-word quizzes). They can choose to be the president of their own tiny company or to run a large multinational corporation. A small company owner may commute on foot, whereas the owner of a large corporation may use a private jet. However, the more difficult the level chosen, the more complicated the maze, the more quizzes encountered, and the less the time available for the avatar to reach the destination. Moreover, if the player cannot get to the office on time, the company goes bankrupt. Thus, while playing, employees are cheering in front of the office. If the player arrives at the office before time runs out, they applaud and give prizes. Furthermore, if the player cannot answer the English quizzes, it is possible to ask one of the employees for help by cashing in points acquired. The player can choose which employee to ask for help, but different employees’ assistance costs different amounts. Finally, as an unexpected element in the game, an employee with no title may have the correct answer, while the vice president may be clueless even if the player has to pay more points to receive assistance from the vice president.
The high degree of choice in this game supports the quantitative finding that children appreciate games that allow players to have greater control of their own learning. They liked games in which the players can choose which words to learn and the difficulty level of those words. These features allow them to set individual goals and the pace of their learning. Interestingly, the games designed by children in this study were generally designed to focus on how much one can learn against individually set goals, not against other players. The element of competition was rarely incorporated or discussed in their evaluations. This contrasts with many commercially-available entertainment computer games (e.g. fighting games) in which competition is a primary element.
Interestingly, the element of surprise/unexpectedness was not one of the elements that the children originally identified in the first class, but the games they designed often incorporated such unexpected elements, and these elements were highly valued in the peer-evaluations. Other examples included players’ vehicle suddenly breaking down or slowing down, and a monster using words that players have not yet learned as weapons. In general, these elements make it so that learning a high number of English words does not guarantee that a player will win the game. Creating such an imperfect linear relationship between learning and winning the game might thus motivate learners in task design. Indeed, one of the children in the project clearly articulated this idea during the presentation, saying ‘that way, lower-grade students who do not know many English words can still enjoy the game.’
IV Discussions and conclusions
This study sought to identify motivational elements in DIGs based on young L2 learners’ perspective on them. Sixth-grade students working in groups designed DIGs for English vocabulary learning. Analyses of their small-group and whole-class discussions, their final game designs, and their evaluations of those designs revealed a number of key game elements that may increase learners’ engagement in performance. The elements that the children identified through playing existing DIGs overlapped highly with elements that have been addressed in the literature. The games that children actually designed made use of elements such as having clear rules and goals, sounds and visual effects, speed and time limitations, and being cognitively challenging. Incorporating elements such as repetition and obstacles, and allowing the players to have greater control/autonomy, were also popular. Finally, children’s peer-evaluations confirmed that game designs that utilized elements such as fantasies/stories, challenging, control, and feedback were important to them. Although this study focused on DIGs for young learners, the findings may apply to any type of task, including both digital and physical tasks for adults as well as for children.
The results of the study suggest that learners’ affective engagement in tasks may depend on both task implementation conditions as well as task-intrinsic characteristics. Some of the elements identified related to task implementation conditions (e.g. self-control functions, instant feedback, repetition) while others (e.g. challenge, fantasy) related to task-intrinsic characteristics. Skehan (2016) makes a clear distinction between task characteristics (e.g. number of elements in tasks) and task conditions (e.g. planning and repetition) and argues that the later may have a more promising relationship to learning on tasks. The present study suggests that it may be worth investigating if the same argument can be made when it comes to the effect of these factors on learners’ task motivation.
In deciding on content and topics for tasks, it is generally suggested that they should be familiar to the learners, intrinsically interesting, and relevant to learners’ needs (Ellis & Shintani, 2014, p. 140). The majority of task content prepared for young L2 beginners has tended to be limited to certain topics: plants and animals, food, sports, family and friends, and school and so forth (e.g. Nikolov, 2016). However, these topics may not necessarily be attractive to children depending on their age, gender and educational environment. Partially due to technology advancement (e.g. TV, internet, social media), children nowadays have access to much more information from abroad compared with previous generations, and their interests may reflect such changes. Indeed, the children in this study chose a variety of topics as the content of their game tasks (e.g. world fairy tales and life styles). Teachers and curriculum designers might listen to children’s voices more seriously in selecting and designing learning content and materials so that tasks can promote children’s personal investment in the learning process.
The element of challenge was also highly valued in the children’s game designs, as both Table 1 and Table 2 show. Many children’s designs offered multiple levels and stages (e.g. more complicated words to learn, more time pressure to learn, etc.) as the player progresses. Players can thus see and feel their progress concretely. Importantly, the challenge element was almost always combined with the element of learner control. Players were allowed to choose the words that they wish to learn and the level of challenge. The children’s game designs appear to reflect their desire to have great autonomy in their own learning. This in turn may suggest that a traditional instructional model, where teachers or curriculum designers preselect target vocabulary and linguistic forms for children and provide them in a uniform fashion (e.g. everybody learning the same sets of words at the same pace based on the same activities) may not match well with children’s motivational dispositions. Although, individualized instruction may not always be realistic in classroom contexts, supplemental instructional tools and materials which allow individualized learning and encourage autonomy (such as DIG tasks) may help to maintain children’s motivation and satisfy their desire for greater autonomy in their learning.
The children in this study identified repetition as another important motivational game element. As mentioned already, in task-based L2 learning studies, a number of researchers have found that repetition is one of the most robust factors in L2 learning (e.g. Bygate, 1996; Lambert, Kormos, & Minn, 2016; Wang, 2014). What has not been clear, however, is learners’ attitudes and emotion towards repetition. Plough and Gass (1993) reported adult learners’ negative reaction to repeating a task they had already completed once. Other researchers have expressed similar concerns, suggesting that asking learners to repeat the exact same tasks may reduce their motivation to learn (e.g. Nitta & Baba, 2014). Researchers’ recent attention to procedural repetition (repeating the same procedure but with different content) (e.g. Kim & Tracy-Ventura, 2013) or repeating the same task with different partners (Lambert, Kormos & Minn, 2016) might be responses to learners’ negative reaction to repeating exactly the same task. When it comes to young L2-learners, our knowledge is very limited. In the present study, learners highly valued encountering the same words repeated in different sub-games. Having a slight variation in the process of repetition appears to be motivating for young learners.
If we look at children’s first-language environment, we notice that it is full of repetition: repetition of rhythms, phrases, grammatical structures in songs and story books. Importantly, many repetitions in songs and stories have slight variations each time they are repeated (e.g. substituting different agents, adding more elements in a given sentence, inserting different phonemes, etc.), and Cook (2000) observed that ‘children seem to enjoy such repeated and predictable structures’ (p. 29). It is not totally clear from our data if the children in this study (older school-age children in the 6th grade) retain the positive attitude towards repetition itself that younger children have. It is also unclear if their attitudes towards the same task repetition and procedure repetition differ, and if so, how they differ. However, we have some evidence indicating that the children in this study valued repetition with slight variations or repetition in different contexts, and that they made the repetition enjoyable and motivational by strategically combining it with other motivational elements. As in the case of Mr. Bold, for example, the repetition element was connected to another motivation element that seems to be particularly important for this age group; namely, creating and maintaining a cool-looking avatar of the player. Knowing that repetition promotes learning, children’s way of combining repetition with other game elements, as in the case of Mr. Bold, can be a potentially useful strategy for teachers and task designers when they incorporate repetition in tasks for young learners.
It should be noted, however, that the broader project’s procedures may have potentially influenced children’s responses. For example, children identified repetition as a game element, but it is possible that their response was an artifact of our asking them to identify game and learning elements separately and then to combine them in their game designs. It should also be remembered that the study was conducted in a particular cultural-educational context, and it is unclear what influence this may have had on learners’ responses. Nevertheless, the study is one of the first to identify motivational elements in task design from children’s points of view. As a next step, we need to understand the relationship between these elements and learning. It is important to know how learners’ motivation and engagement in a specific DIG task leads to acquisition not only in the immediate DIG learning context but also in novel learning contexts.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research was partially supported by the Eiken Foundation of Japan.