This website is a curation project intended to support language educators, and educators in training, who are interested in incorporating digital games into their lessons on English language pragmatics. Although our focus is on English, many resources and aspects can be used or adapted by all language educators, or even learners. 

 

We chose to focus on how online gaming can assist students in learning the pragmatics of request making and responding to requests in Standard American English. By using online video games in the classroom, students are given the opportunity to make their own pragmatic decisions, receive immediate feedback from non-player characters, and learn pragmatics in a low-stakes and more realistic environment. In this project, we have analyzed how these elements aid the learning of pragmatics regarding request making and request responses in English. The three main types of requests are direct requests, conventional indirect requests, and nonconventional indirect requests, each having specific contexts in which they are used. This is also the case for responding to requests, in that there are multiple ways to accept and deny requests, each used to convey something different. The structure of a refusal is also very important to learn in order to avoid being impolite or rude. Life simulation games, adventure games, and interactive film games can allow players to make choices that vary in pragmatic elements (politeness, severity, solidarity, etc.). When players are given the option of which type of request or response they could make, they must evaluate each option on a pragmatic level. Students may also use these games to observe which types of requests and replies are made in which contexts. This allows students to learn the pragmatics of request making and replies to requests in an environment that facilitates quick, fun, and low stakes learning.

 

This website is organized into four main sections, including the homepage, where we have included this introduction synthesis that you are currently reading, as well as links to each of the other sections at the bottom of the page. The next section after Home is Resources (if you click directly on this header within the menu or at the bottom of this homepage, it will take you to a directory), which is then subdivided into the categories of our empirical resources; Requests in English, Responding to Requests, Games and Pragmatics, Games and Requests, and then our less formal and more varied (non-game specific) Additional Resource section. The next section is Game Spotlight, which takes you to a page with general overviews of the two games we are highlighting in this project–Sunrise Village and Palia. Within that section and page, you can then navigate to the individualized pages for each game with additional resource guides and information. The final section of our curation project website is the Sample Activity page. This includes our curated activity using the information as gathered throughout the rest of this project. The activity we created for this sample section is based around Sunrise Village, but we have also included some bonus information throughout the project on how we think aspects of Palia could also be used as the basis for a similar kind of activity structure. 

 

Ultimately we hope that our work on this curation project can aid other educators, and those in training, in implementing digital games as a tool when teaching pragmatics within ESL/EFL contexts. Much of the information here could also be used as a building block and aid for additional contexts as well. The three of us have learned a lot about the growing resources for digital game integration and language education, and our interest and passion for this subject is built within this website. We hope any who access this project can also gain inspiration and knowledge from these resources as we have. As daily life becomes more and more tech reliant and digitally focused, language education can grow with this trend rather than against it, and we hope that this project conveys this opportunity.