Resources for Games and Requests

This study examines whether L2 learners of English can improve their knowledge of the request speech act by observing perlocutionary effects (real-life-like feedback from interlocutor's) of requests using a digital game/gamification of instruction. The study found that after a single session of this gameplay, the learners’ receptive and productive knowledge of request improved from what it was before playing the game, but was not retained when a delayed post-test was conducted. The findings of this study were encouraging for those who want to incorporate digital games and gamification into their teaching of pragmatics, particularly regarding requests and perlocutionary effects. The author found interesting examples of transfer of learned knowledge across modalities, increased productive knowledge, and the development--through practice in different skill domains--of declarative knowledge.

In this paper, Taguchi is exploring the benefits that come from using technology to learn pragmatics; this being understanding linguistic forms and their communicative functions. Because of the nature of learning pragmatics–socially grounded and context-sensitive–technology-enhanced environments seem to be a great place for learning. Additionally, Taguchi mentions that technology can help with providing direct access to specific contexts in communicative practice. Taguchi further mentions that technology also provides: multimodal input, offers opportunities for interaction with consequences, and supports experience-based learning. Thus, a digital game was created to demonstrate an example of a technology-enhanced environment for teaching students how to make a request in English. 

The study focused on Chinese learners of English in which various studies were conducted. Taguchi intended to investigate the effects of various feedback conditions on learning outcomes, how the role of metapragmatic affects knowledge in learning, and transferring request-making knowledge  to a novel speech act. Taguchi concludes by emphasizing the effectiveness of digital games for teaching request-making in English to Chinese learners and suggests future research for technology-enhanced pragmatic learning.