October 2007 — Features
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On a Quest for English
Active Learners
Schneider and Zheng weren't the first to explore the languagelearning possibilities of an MMORPG. In the spring of 2006, Bruce Gooch, then a professor at Northwestern University, and graduate students Yolanda Rankin and Rachel Gold put together a pilot study to evaluate second language acquisition in the context of gaming. "I championed the idea at Northwestern of using MMORPGs to learn a second language," Gooch says, "but Yolanda cleverly used it for ESL in the study."
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In their proposal for the study, the Northwestern researchers wrote: "Since MMORPGs support social interaction between players, MMORPGs serve as the catalyst for fostering students' language proficiency as students interact in a foreign language while playing the game. For these reasons, we believe that MMORPGs embody an interesting and underutilized learning environment for second language acquisition."
The game they selected to use for this study was Sony Online Entertainment's EverQuest II (EQ2), a sequel to the enormously popular EverQuest. Though not as commercially successful as WoW, EQ2 offered key advantages, Rankin explains.
"We thought it would be a better game for language learning than WoW, because everything in the game is labeled, so you have an opportunity to get visual reinforcement of information," she says. "You see a noun and you get a label: This is a bird, this is a fortress. Also, the game's quests are documented and displayed on the screen. As students complete these quests, they develop an appreciation for verbs, adverbs, and colloquial meanings. EverQuest just has a lot more text all over the place."
The eight-week pilot study involved six English language learners (ELLs)—four men and two women—who were either Northwestern graduate students or spouses of Northwestern grad students. Two of the subjects were native speakers of Korean, two spoke Chinese, and two Castilian. They all played EQ2 for at least four hours per week.
Rankin, a PhD candidate in Northwestern's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, emphasizes that the study was "highly preliminary." But the results do suggest that EverQuest, and possibly MMORPGs in general, reinforce language acquisition for a number of reasons. The pursuit of quests, for example, requires players to become what Rankin calls "active learners" who engage with other players and the gaming environment. The study also supports Schneider and Zheng's conclusion that the games are inherently motivating.
"The game requires them to do things," Rankin says, "to read directions, to interact with other avatars, to travel over the landscape; that's why they learn the language. You have to comprehend the information that's in front of you in order to advance to different levels and complete the quests. And you can't complete the quests without asking for help from other players, which, again, requires you to understand the language." EverQuest II provides several chat channels, allowing players to type messages to each other, ask questions, and meet for joint quests.
