Use of Digital Games in Teaching Vocabulary to Young Learners

Abstract

It has been an educational policy for the Turkish educational authorities to teach English as a foreign language from early ages of children. This research attempts to determine the role of digital games on enhancing English vocabulary and to com¬pare games with pen and paper practices. For this purpose, digital games on EBA (Education Informatics Network) platform were used for enhancing vocabulary teaching in a public primary school in Turkey. The study recruited 37 third-grade students from two separate classes. A class of 20 students was identified as the experimental group, and another class of 17 students was assigned as the control group. The data for this study was obtained by gathering information from pre and post-tests. The control group received English lessons without using games on EBA, while the experimental group used EBA while learning vocabulary. Independent sample t-test was used to measure the effect of digital games on the vocabulary learning of the experimental group. It was deduced from the findings that there were statistically significant differences in the mean scores of post-tests. The findings showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group and the statistical results were considerable in post-test. Findings indicate that digital games usage in teaching vocabulary is effective for learners to improve their vocabulary knowledge.