Investigating the Role of Online Video Games in Enhancing EFL Leamers’ Speaking Abilities Case Study of Master One EFL Students at Chadli Bendjedid University of El Taref

Abstract

This present study seeks to investigate the role of using online video games (OVGs) in boosting master one EFL learners’ speaking abilities at Chadli Bendjedid University, as well as exploring their attitude towards playing video games for educational purposes. Many researchers have already discussed the potential of considering video games as a reliable source of learning and a useful tool to develop speaking abilities. A lot of teachers seem to ignore the benefits of playing OVGs and focus only on the negative effects. However, there is no denying that OVGs can help enhance pronunciation, fluency grammar, vocabulary, and comprehension. Thus, a questionnaire was directed to master one EFL learners at Chadli Bendjdid University in the 2022/2023 academic year, the survey and case study methods were adopted to reinforce the research results and to confirm or deny the put forward hypotheses and the data gathered from the questionnaire was quantitatively analyzed. The results obtained from the analyzed data revealed that most EFL learners at Chadli Bendjedid University are everyday gamers, which explains how video games significantly influence students’ daily lives. The findings also showed that not all EFL learners play video games for educational purposes, most of them only use them to have fun and pass the time. However, most of them agreed that video games have helped develop their speaking abilities indirectly. The results also proved that most if not all online video game genres are effective in improving speaking skills. Moreover, the study confirmed that video games has a big influence on developing student’s vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, fluency, comprehension, and overall speaking performance. Eventually, some practical recommendations were provided for teachers to make the necessary changes and to facilitate the process of learning and mastering speaking English at Chadli Bendjdid University. The results of this study were limited by time, therefore, further studies on this topic can be discussed from different perspectives in the future