The Contribution of Educational Video Games to Learning Graphemes

Abstract

This study analyzes the amount of learning that takes place through an educational videogame created to teach young learners initial letter sounds in English. A control and experimental group of ESL learners were examined in order to compare advances in grapheme recognition through gameplay against those learning from traditional methods. All students were given pre-tests to identify prior knowledge of phonetic sounds. Then the experimental group was taught using chants, powerpoints and worksheets while the control group played the game. All students were then re-evaluated with a post-test to see if their scores increased and learning was compared across groups.