Blending Video Games Into Language Learning

Around 2 billion people worldwide engage in video games and a similar number of English language learners are anticipated by the year 2020. It can be assumed that many language learners are also ‘gamers', and that a language learner may play a video game to learn English. This article focuses on the language learning affordances in offline video games. General game-based learning principles identified by Gee are used as the method to identify and classify the learning affordances in a selection of video games. These learning principles are explained and then used to detail general learning opportunities inherent in a variety of video games. It suggests that language learning opportunities on video-games are too varied and that the scaffolding guidance of a teacher might be needed. It concludes by proposing that contextualized live video-game-like immersive experiences could also be conducive to language learning.