Over the past decade there has been an increasing attempt to explore the potential of computer games in order to engage students’ towards foreign language learning. However, literature review has shown that there are still few attempts to provide empiric evidence of the educational potential of computer games, whereas the present study aims to address this lack. The purpose of our paper is to explore the possibilities of using a highly interactive 3D online game, we previously designed according to our student needs, in order to reinforce their foreign language acquisition and communicative competence. The target groups are students of a German foreign language course from the A1 level (CEFR). For our project we designed a 3D online-game that is based on a roleplay,in which students need to cooperate in order to complete the game successfully. The game is built upon the OpenSim platform, and cooperation is conducted through game chats. Game chat interactions are being registered in a log file that is later processed. Furthermore, by analyzing different indicators we are able to obtain initial evidences to assess students’ proficiency regarding their communicative competence in the target language. We include some examples from a pilot study we did with students of a German foreign language course (A1).

1. Using a 3D online game to assess
students’ foreign language acquisition &
communicative competence
Anke Berns
Manuel Palomo Duarte
Juan Manuel Beardo Dodero
Concepción Valero-Franco

2. Content
■ Purpose of the Study
■ Research Question &Teaching Framework
■ Blended Teaching & Computergames
■ Game-Design & Platform Architecture
■ Exerimental Setting
■ Results & Future Work

3. 1. Purpose
■ to present the results of an ongoing study which has been
carried out with students of a German Foreign Language course
at the University of Cádiz
■ to explore the possibilities of enhancing students’ foreign
language acquisition & communicative competence
through the use of a 3-D online game

4. 2. Research questions
■ How does participation in a cooperative online game affect
students` interaction & communicative competence?
■ Does the designed game enhance students` fluency &
accuracy?
■ Which factors influence students` interaction &
communication with others?

5. 3. Teaching framework
■ our students are usually enrolled in very large size foreign
language courses
■ students often lack of opportunities to use & interact with
other speakers in the target language
■ language practice outside the classroom becomes
extremely important to provide students with enough language
practice

6. 4. Blended teaching practices
■ many universities & teachers have introduced in their teaching
practices the use of VLEs (WebCT, Moodle, Second Life,
OpenSim etc.)
■ VLEs provide teachers & students with access to learning
materials, services & applications anytime, any place & at
any pace
■ most widely used LMS/VLE offer a huge variety of tools
(wikis, discussion forums, blogs, chats & messagging) which
facilitate versatile interaction beyond the classroom

7. ■ in the last decade there has been an increasing trend to explore
the motivational & educational potential of
computergames to enhance foreign language learning
■ amongst the often employed computergames are those which
allow & encourage players to collaborate & interact with other
players (e.g MMPOG: World of Warcraft, Lineage; Social
games: Pulitzer game) (Reinders, 2012; Cornillie, 2012)

8. 5. Cooperative computergames &
SLA
■ the development of a foreign language is almost wholly
dependent on the amount of comprehensible input a learner
receives (Krashen 1985, Warschauer 2011)
Hence it is important:
■ to provide learners with those kinds of interactions that facilitate
the intake of comprehensible input (Doughty 1986, Pisa
1994, Gass & Varonis 1994, Long 1996)

9. ■ to stimulate the production of language output (Swain,
2005)
■ to encourage negotiation of meaning (Pica, 1994)
■ to facilitate noticing (Schmidt, 1990)
■ to provide learners with opportunities to become aware of their
weaknesses & deficits in the target language (Swain, 2005)
■ pushed output provides learners with opportunities to get
useful feedback & thus to modify their language output

10. ■ pushed output is important to focus learners attention on
form and feedback & thus provide them with the possibility to
modify their language output & competences in the target
language (Swain, 2005; Westhoff, 2004)

11. 6. Game-Design
Level 1: Memory

12. 7. Architecture of the platform

13. 8. Experimental setting
8.1 Study participants & procedure
■ 12 students were selected from the same German Language
course
■ students were placed in 3 different categories:
-category 1 (very active students)
-category 2 (less active students)
-category 3 (active & less active students)

14. 8.2 Data collection & analysis
▪ transcripts of students’ text chat interaction which permit
us to analyze students’ interaction & use of the target language
▪ pre- and post-tests to analyze the impact on students’ foreign
language acquisition & communicative competence

15. 8.3 Pre- and posttests
■ students were asked to fill out the three part test once before
and once after performing the game
■ test 1 focuses on students’ vocabulary knowledge
■ test 2 focuses on students’ grammar knowledge
■ test 3 focuses on students’ writing skills & communicative
competence

16. 8.3.2 Pre- & posttests
Test 1 Test 2
Test 3

17. 9. Results
■ from the pre-and post-test has shown that all students, no matter
what category they belong to, increased their grades in the 3
aspects assessed
pre-test post-test
Categories 1 to 3

18. ■ the number of lexical mistakes, use of native words &
confirmation requests in the chats was lower in those categories
where at least one of its members had previously shown a high
willingness to interact and communicate (category 1 & 3)

19. ■ feedback is higher in categories 2 & 3. It seems that there is more
need for feedback

20. ■ the results are especially interesting in terms of writing skills &
grammatical accuracy and their improvement on part of some
participants in category 2 & 3
Writing skills
Category 2 Category 3

21. Grammatical accuracy
Category 2 Category 3

22. 10. Future work
■ a deeper statistical analysis on a greater data set is
necessary to find reasonable evidences in favor of the virtual
game learning experience
■ to prepare the experimental environment to automate text
chat interaction analysis using natural language processing
tools
■ to detect regular communication patterns in text chats
before being supervised to confirm or revoke its validity as
evidences of communicative competence

23. DAIFCEALE
Berns, A. et. al (2013). ‘Game-like language learning in 3D virtual
environments’. Computers & Education, 60 (1), pp. 210-220.

24. Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the following projects:
■ ASCETA (Ref. P09-TIC-5230)
■ Proyecto Innovación Docente, UCA (PI-13-011)
■ OpenDiscoverySpace (CIP-ICT_PSP-2011-5)
■ ABANT (TIN2010-198727TSI)

25. For any further question
please write us an email:
anke.berns@uca.es (Dep. of French and English
Philology, UCA)
manuel. palomo@uca.es (Dep. of Computer
Science, UCA)
juanmanuel.dodero@uca.es (Dep. of Computer
Science, UCA)