Effects of Task-Based Instruction through Online Games on Willingness to Communicate in English of Undergraduate Students in Bangkok

Abstract

The objectives of the current study were: 1) to explore effects of task-based instruction through online games on willingness to communicate in English of undergraduate students in Bangkok, and 2) to examine their opinions about the instruction through online games on their willingness to communicate in English. The participants were 15 first-year undergraduate students who studied in a public university in Bangkok in the second semester of the academic year 2014. Grammar points from the game contents were selected as topics for discussion during the instruction in the current study. The research instruments in this study included two sets of willingness to communicate in English questionnaires and a set of questions for focus group interview. The quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics to obtain mean scores, standard deviations, frequencies, and percentages; the qualitative data was analyzed by content analysis. The findings showed that 1) the participants reported to be somewhat willing to communicate in English both in the classroom and online gaming contexts, and 2) The participants identified both advantages and disadvantages of task-based instruction through online games. The advantages included engaging and fun learning environment, low-anxiety context for communicating in the target language, exposure to the target language, and opportunity to communicate in the target language with other language users. On the contrary, the disadvantages were difficulty of the language of the game contents, unrelated vocabulary to their daily life, and more attention to gameplay than the lessons.