Incidental acquisition of the english language through video games

Abstract

[eng] Video games as a medium keep growing and are gradually becoming one of the most preferred entertainment forms for young people. As English is a very prominent feature of multimedia entertainment, this paper aims to showcase and propose video games as a source for learning English as a second language. The dissertation follows theories on incidental second language acquisition — on Krashen’s second language acquisition theories (1982), Gardner’s work (1972) on motivation and research on incidental vocabulary acquisition (Huckin and Coady 1999). A questionnaire was conducted and sent as a form over a Discord server. Said form asks people whether they perceive that playing video games has indeed helped them with their English, if they think it has helped them only with their English vocabulary or with their English grammar too, and if they could see playing video games as a substitute for formal English learning. The results show that most people do think that playing video games has helped them improve and learn English, yet they would not consider it a valid form of learning over taking English lessons. Thus, the paper concludes that more research should be carried out on this field of study. First, more empirical research on whether video game playing helps incidentally learn vocabulary should be carried out, and more specifically if it affects grammar learning, and secondly investigate whether learning English from a video game could be seriously considered by parents for their children.