The Role of Language Games in Increasing Students Knowledge and Motivation to Learn Vocabulary

Abstract

Although vocabulary is a difficult skill to be mastered, it is still significant in learning any given language. That is why, teachers should adopt useful techniques that can assist and encourage the students to learn. Importantly, the main objective of this research work is to inspect the effectiveness of applying language games as an educational strategy in developing the students’ vocabulary storage and augmenting their motivation. We hypothesize that if teachers use language games, students’ motivation as well as knowledge will develop, and the teachers at Mila University Center do not teach vocabulary alongside their allocated subjects. In order to test our hypotheses, we have opted for a teachers' Questionnaire that was handed into 20 teachers at the University Center of Mila. As well as a students' Questionnaire that was distributed to 100 first year LMD students at the same university Center. The questionnaire seeks to know the teachers' points of view about the utility of language games as a motivational technique. While, the Questionnaire for the students collects data about the opinions and perceptions concerning learning vocabulary by means of language games. More specifically, the current study prescribes the merits of implementing such a tool on the students’ motivation to learn lexical items. The obtained findings illustrate that both the teachers and the learners arrive at an agreement which says that the integration of language games in the field of language learning and teaching is advantageous due to their great influence in increasing the learners’ motivation to learn vocabulary and facilitating the teaching process for teachers.