Author(s)

Nian Ci Ren, Ze Liu

Corresponding Author

Ze Liu

Abstract

Though much criticism has been voiced about online games for being mindless entertainment, contemporary literature has supported the use of them in the educational context, for instance, second language acquisition. Yet limited literature has focused on the effects of playing games in leisure time on young working adults’ informal learning. This research aims to assess the effects of playing an online collectable card game on young working adults’ target vocabulary acquisition through a quasi-experimental research design, to investigate whether vocabulary acquisition is correlated to their learning motivation, and to further evaluate their views on playing games in English for language learning purposes through follow-up interviews. The results indicated that playing the online collectable card game contributed to statistically significant vocabulary gain, and that vocabulary gain might correlate to English learning motivation. Participants generally had positive feelings towards using the game as a tool to learn English vocabulary and reported “fun” and “interesting” as comments, though some concerns about the limitation of words in the game and the application of learning were expressed.

Keywords

Vocabulary acquisition; Motivation; Young working adults; Game