educational technology
Amir Mashhadi
Abstract
With the rapid advancements in new communication technologies, the authorities of Iranian educational ministry emphasized opening a new room in teaching and learning with the application of the new medium of mobile communication from the early childhood so as to attract the learners as well as to improve ...
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With the rapid advancements in new communication technologies, the authorities of Iranian educational ministry emphasized opening a new room in teaching and learning with the application of the new medium of mobile communication from the early childhood so as to attract the learners as well as to improve their main skills of learning. The current study was conducted to examine the effect of combining two main non formal media of gaming and mobile communication with face to face teaching on learning English language. To that purpose, the performance of 270 Iranian students ranging from 12 to 17 with pre-intermediate proficiency level was traced to highlight their blended learning of new words while being provided with marginal introduction to the contents via digital games within three groups. While the face to face instruction was common to all the participants in the education context, the first group did the prefabricated games and the second and third ones did the native Iranian game of 'Xhane Bazi', which was modified for the purpose of English language instruction, both in real and virtual environments. The assessment of students' performance was not limited to mere reliance on the traditional methods of pretest. Instead, posttest and the formative assessment, survey, and summative assessment were also utilized. The qualitative and qualitative analysis of data revealed a meaningful effect of indigenous instructional games on learning English language.