EFL students' attitudes and perceptions of technology - based games in learning English at Nguyen Thai Binh Secondary School: Master's Thesis

Abstract

It is universally acknowledged that technology-based games play an important role in the language teaching and learning process. In many countries all over the world, technology-based games have applied to the process of teaching and learning English widely and effectively. Nevertheless, when it came to the context of education in Vietnam, especially the English subject, examinations were mainly grammar focused. Hence, teaching and learning English were purely examination-based. This leaded to the fact that students lost their interest in acquiring the new language and failed to interact with foreigners. That affected quite much to language knowledge, language skills and their studying emotion. Therefore, the main aim of this paper is to explore EFL students' attitudes and perceptions of technology-based games in learning English at Nguyen Thai Binh Secondary school. This study involved 86 students in grade 6 who were having chances of studying with technology-based games in classrooms and taking part in answering the questionnaire and twelve students in responding to the semi - structured interview questions. The data gained from the questionnaire was analyzed by SPSS software version 22 in terms of descriptive statistics (means, standard deviation and frequency). The findings of the study showed that learner related factors had positive impacts on learning engagement for technology-based games. The researcher then analyzed the data taken from the semi-structured interview to make the results of the study clearer. These preliminary findings are hoped to contribute to a better understanding of the current perspectives of EFL students' perception of technology-based games in learning English, with a view to bringing some practical implications in the Vietnamese context, thereby improving the quality of the teaching English language for EFL students at Nguyen Thai Binh secondary school in particular and Vietnam in general.