Goals Achieved with Theories

It is rare to see video games used extensively in teaching, though language teaching may well be the most prominent line of teaching where video games are used. However, even rarer is the sight of Let's Plays used at schools. Fascinatingly, as mentioned in the CALL section, the first CALL related method, though not belonging to the category of CALL itself, is the recording of a person's voice on a phonograph or a cylinder, and using it in classroom situations. The same principle can be also used with Let's Plays: a person or a group of people play a game and comment on it while recording their interaction. Afterwards the recording can be played in a classroom situation, analysed, used as an example, and many other things. We already have the chapters in our books in a listenable form and watching videos has happened in Finnish classrooms already 20 years ago, when I started school.

Nowadays we even have the Internet, which makes distributing videos much easier, though with its

own restrictions. People can upload videos to the Internet faster and easier than ever before, be it made with professional cameras, a phone, or by capturing one's screen activity while playing.

There has been a lot of discussion of video games during the years; the latest discussion of their dangers getting media attention on a global scale has been the beginning of 2018. It is understandable that some people worry about the effects of different media to the well-being of their kids. Therefore, this material package, as mentioned before, has been designed for students of upper secondary school.

Those consist of people between ages 16-18 as students, and this particular group was selected just because of their age. This age group can partially already get the access to all sorts of video games, which makes the whole course more motivating already. The course is supposed to give the students freedom to choose their own games to play, at least mostly, so not being “of age” does not leave them with only a handful of options that might be interesting to them. However, it is ultimately the teacher's responsibility to make sure that the game the learner wants to play is suitable for classroom activity.

Therefore, I have made a list of the recently popular games and their restrictions, which can be found from the material package section. Naturally, this list will most likely be outdated once this thesis is published but some of the games people are interested in are most likely still found on that list.

The goal of this material package is to provide teachers a choice in their way of teaching. Technology in teaching is in my opinion not used to its full potential, especially when it comes to games. To harness the popular leisure time activity of playing video games not only motivates the learners to keep on learning but most likely also makes them do even more than just the bare minimum. However, these things do not necessarily apply to everyone but by the standards of common sense things that are interesting to people, usually motivate them. Because the subject matter of this material package is playing video games and it is designed to be a course, it is most likely that the students who choose the course are already interested in video games and therefore already motivated and familiar with the subject.

In this thesis, I have used three methods: CALL, TBLL, and Gamification. There are several reasons why I chose to use these three in my thesis, one of them being that I did not find it sufficient to use only one approach.

Computer assisted language learning is an essential part of the framework for it entails the use of computer in learning situations and, even better for my material package, it discusses particularly the learning of languages, as the name already states. Computers are indeed very essential for video

games, for the first video games were created on computers and nowadays, as I have already mentioned before, we can consider gaming consoles and even modern smartphones to be computers of sorts. The fact that computers have been used in education for over 50 years should only encourage both learners and teachers to use them. In addition, in our modern society we use computers daily:

check our phone, send emails, perhaps play a game or write on text programs, just like this thesis also is written. Therefore, we can say that use of computers has become a mundane and banal part of our lives. The main point of me using this theory in my framework is obvious, though: it has in it exactly what I would like to bring out in language learning, the use of technology. It is the most wholesome starting point for the thesis and it has some background to it on which I have based my thesis and material package.

Task Based Language Learning is a part of my threesome of theories for it focuses on the kind of exercises I find to be very compatible with the goals of this thesis. The most important feature in TBLL for this material package is the way it achieves the learning goals: the exercises are done in order to get to a goal, not just the basic exercises that focus on e.g. grammar. This works very well with my material package for the Let's Plays the learners make during the course are a means to an end: The main idea is to use the playing of a video game both as a motivator and an opportunity for authentic language use. While playing the learners are expected to use English to communicate with the video audience or, when in groups, with each other. It is most likely not the native language as the learners and in-group situations is almost certain that at least one of the people does not speak English as their first language. Grammar and the traditional parts of language teaching are not in focus but daring to use the language and the improving of both ones spoken English and its fluency.

Games give a context in which one can use English more easily for the language of video games in many cases is English, or at least the language can be found as an option in the language settings.

That in turn may make the language use easier.

The third in this trio of theory background is gamification. As previously mentioned, games give in themselves an incentive to use English. However, it is an altogether different thing to be motivated to do something on your free time as to do it for school. Gamification is brought to this context to further the enthusiasm of the learners and to keep up their motivation to keep on doing the exercises. In practice, gamification can be seen in the dragon-growing feature added to the material package. In an ideal setting, this dragon would be in a digital form in a web portal, where both the teacher and the learner can check on the dragon and keep up with the learner's percentage of finished exercises. This makes it very easy to follow the progress of the learner and encourages them to see, what sort of thing

the dragon can become with more work. The whole idea is quite similar to the very popular toy of the 90's and early 2000's: Tamagotchi. Whether one speaks of the fact that one plays video games during the course, or just of the dragon growing motivator applied to the course, one can say that gamification is only a natural part of my academic framework.

The goal of this material package is to encourage the learners to use different methods of learning English and increase their self-confidence when speaking. I find it important that in a world where global interaction is more and more commonplace, one should speak with confidence, even though one's grammar was not 100% correct. The most important thing in communication is to get the message across, even though the correctness of grammar helps it.