摘要：This paper reports on a study into the effects of digital game play on learners’ Willingnessto Communicate (WTC), or individuals’ “readiness to enter into discourse at a particulartime with a specific person or persons, using a L2” (MacIntyre, Dörnyei, Clément, &Noels, 1998, p. 547). Thirty Thai learners of English as a foreign language enrolled in aUniversity language course completed six 90–minute lessons playing Ragnarok Online, apopular online role–playing game. The game had been installed on a private server andwas thus only available to participants in the study. We modified the game to includespecial instructions, or quests (missions that players are assigned to accomplish in order toget items and progress throughout the game), designed to encourage collaboration andcommunication. To gauge participants’ WTC, a series of questionnaires was designed,adapted from MacIntyre et al’s (2001) WTC scale and previous studies on language andcommunication anxiety (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986; McCroskey & Richmond,1982) and perceived competence (Compton, 2004; MacIntyre & Charos, 1996). Theseasked respondents about their (own perceptions of their) willingness to use English, aswell as their confidence, anxiety, and perceived communicative competence incommunicating in English. The questionnaires were administered at the start of the course,and again after six gaming sessions. Results on the first set of questionnaires showed thatstudents had low confidence, high anxiety, low perceived competence, and low WTC. Thesecond set of results showed a marked and significant improvement, with participantsfeeling more confident, less anxious, more competent, and more willing to communicate.We argue that the careful construction of tasks that draw on the affordances of games canhave a positive effect on the language learning process.
关键词：Computer-Assisted Language Learning; Language Play; Second Language;Acquisition
