| dc.description.abstract | In an era of internationalization, English is an important skill. In the past, there were many studies which discussed about English learning. However, most of them focus on improving learners′ English reading and writing ability, and less focus on English pronunciation ability. In the digital game-based learning environment, the digital badges mechanism will allow learners to achieve different goals and get the corresponding rewards, with a positive feedback. However, not all of learners are suitable for this kind of game mechanism, so there is a need to consider learner′s individual differences. There are many studies point out that the learner′s anxiety of English and prior knowledge affect their learning performance. Therefore, this study developed an English pronunciation system with multiplayer online role-playing game to create a game-based learning environment, and contained digital badges mechanism. The learning materials were designed with mission-based learning so that learners could practice their English pronunciation ability through solving mission in the gaming process. In order to investigate the impacts of learners with different English anxiety and prior knowledge on English pronunciation performance, badge performance, game performance, learning motivation and gaming flow performance, a quasi-experiment was conducted in a university course with 56 students. The experiment was conducted by dividing students into different English anxiety and prior knowledge, and the experiment time was 80 minutes.
The results showed that the digital game-based learning system could improve learners′ pronunciation performance. Among them, learners with different English anxiety had no significant difference in English pronunciation performance, but some items of badge performance and game performance were significant. It could be seen that learners with high anxiety need more English listening and speaking practice in the learning process. Learners with different game experience had no significant difference in English pronunciation performance, but learners with high experience in game performance used speech practice more often than learners with low experience. It also could be found that low ability English learners progress score significantly higher than high ability English learners. High ability English learners in the badge performance and game performance had significant difference. It could be seen that the difficulty of badges could distinguish learners with different English abilities. High ability learners also could be obtained from unexpected badge, and their speaking accuracy (all average) was significantly higher than those of low ability learners. However, no significant was found in speaking accuracy (each mission the highest average), so it can be found that there was no significant difference in the speaking accuracy with high-ability learners after learning through the system. In the correlation part, it could be seen that mission failure times were negatively correlated with learning motivation and gaming flow performance, while gaming flow performance was positively correlated with learning motivation.
The results of this study can help learners with different English anxiety and prior knowledge to improve their learning outcomes. In addition, for the researcher who will provide a design framework in the future when developing a suitable digital game-based learning environment, and can develop the system according to the differences of different learners.
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