Game Framework to Improve English Language Learners' Motivation and Performance

The dominance of English as the global language of entertainment, education and business creates a strong need to learn and teach it. Learning a second language is often difficult and educators continue to seek innovative ways to improve language learning and increase learners' motivation especially for second language learners. A number of technologies exist to assist in language learning, ranging from basic tools of distance, electronic, and mobile learning, to the use of games on mobile platforms to teach language skills. Developing games for educational purposes, however, is not a straightforward task even for professional developers. As this technology is a recent trend, the available frameworks and guidelines to help developers as well as educators are still not adequate. In this paper, we explore an educational mobile game framework that is designed to improve students' motivation and enhance English language learning. Through a review of existing mobile learning frameworks, plus refining and validation process with experts, the paper identifies necessary components and their holistic structure. The key components include inputs from the domain of persuasive technology, Bloom's taxonomy and educational content. At the core of the framework, it is a set of guidelines to develop mobile language learning mobile games. We present an evaluation of the proposed framework using expert input, which returned a positive and supportive feedback. In a subsequent phase, the proposed framework will be used to build a mobile game application to enhance language learning, and an experimental evaluation will be set on a target sample of Arabic-speaking primary school students.