English Teaching using Mobile Serious Games with Geo-Location Features: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Serious games have been widely studied from the educational perspective due to their proven potential to increase the learners' motivation and engagement in different academic activities, including language acquisition. At the same time, the fast growth of mobile devices access and Internet connectivity have motivated the creation of serious games for mobile environments that encourage the learner to access the educational content without time or location restrictions. In this sense, mobile serious games that lead the learners to move to different locations to achieve the game objectives, are known as location-based serious games. On the other hand, Latin American governments have started to propose and implement new policies to overcome the problem of English acquisition in their teenagers and then expand their professional opportunities by improving their English skills. Considering these phenomena, a systematic literature review was conducted to find the gaming elements that help to create successful serious games with geo-location features for English teaching, Additionally, this review inquires about the different validation methods and the results obtained in several researches. The answers to the research questions show that some of those elements, particularly self-improvement and competition, with a proper combination with educational aspects, are presented in most of the games analyzed and may indeed increase the learner commitment.