Learning by Gaming : Investigating the Influence of Playing Video Games on Vocabulary Level among Swedish ESL Learners

Abstract: The video game industry is one of the fastest growing markets in the world today. The fact that playing video games has become such a popular recreational activity among youths and adolescents has created a need for research investigating the effects of video game playing. Because of the role of the English language as a global lingua franca, most video games are released in English. Since most video games are released in English, many believe that the utilization of video games can help learners of English to improve their knowledge of how to utilize the English language. The aim of this study is to investigate whether video game playing does positively influence the English receptive vocabulary level of ESL learners. In addition, the present study also investigated the influence of other factors, such as the utilization of online communication tools, the average time spent playing video games, and the type of video games played, on English receptive vocabulary level. The study was conducted using quantitative research methods. Since the aim of the study was to investigate the relation between two separate aspects, the study had to utilize two separate elicitation methods for the data collection: one questionnaire (that was supposed to determine each informant’s video game habits) and one vocabulary test (that was supposed to get an approximation of each informant’s receptive vocabulary level). When the data had been collected, the tests were corrected, and the participants were categorized according to the previously mentioned variables. The mean scores of the categories were later examined and compared to each other. Differences between groups that were of high importance were further examined, with a t-test, to determine whether the difference was statistically significant or not. The results of the study show that the vocabulary level difference between ESL learners that do play video games and ESL learner that do not play video game is insignificant. The results further show that the utilization of online communication tools while playing video games positively influences vocabulary level, as the mean score difference on the vocabulary test between OCT users and OCT non-users was revealed to be significant by the t-test. The analysed data thus show that the influence of the utilization of online communication tools on English receptive vocabulary level are more significant that the influence of playing video games.