An Investigation of Taiwanese Non-English Major Freshmen's Perception of Learning English through Online Edutainment Games

This study aims to investigate how non-English major freshmen in Taiwan perceive their English learning through task-based online interactive negotiation games. A large body of evidence suggests that limited time for English learning and a lack of effective learning strategy have caused inadequate and ineffective English learning of non-English major students in Taiwan. Therefore, this research attempts to draw upon an online edutainment game website to provide 30 non-English major freshmen with remedial instruction. With a qualitative approach, this study was executed during one academic year to investigate students' perception of instructional uses of edutainment games. Student participants showed that simulation and interactivity of online edutainment games address a need for alternative learning in remediation of vocabulary deficits. The online negotiation games can model complex worlds where players can witness how targeted words are used by game characters and experiment with those words. Participants agree that online edutainment games add interaction to their learning and provide them with authentic contexts to learn new vocabularies. In addition, prompt feedbacks and risk-free conversation options of online negotiation games engage students in learning vivid word and sentence examples.