Spanish B1 vocabulary acquisition among Chinese students with Guadalingo

Abstract

PurposeThe objective of this research is to measure Chinese students' progress in gaining new vocabulary in Spanish at the B1 level after using the serious video game Guadalingo.Design/methodology/approachA group of 30 Chinese students participated in an experiment, in which 16 of them played Guadalingo; the other 14 were used as the control group. The experimental group played five lessons of the video game in a period of 10 days. Before and after the lessons, students were tested on their knowledge of the vocabulary from these units.FindingsResults have shown that the use of Guadalingo helped these students to enhance their knowledge of the target vocabulary by 17.40% after the completion of the missions.Originality/valueBased on our result, the use of video games seems to be a suitable and great support to the foreign language classroom, and the use of Guadalingo could be considered a valuable tool for this purpose.