Jogos sociais digitais como ambiente de aprendizagem da língua inglesa

Abstract

This research is linked to the Research Line "Education, Technology and Development” present in the Program of Graduate Education at Vale do Rio dos Sinos University- UNISINOS. The theme is related to the use of digital social games for learning English. The authors based the research are: Castells (2000) , GHG (2008), Lemos (2002, 2009, 2012), MOITA (2007), Piaget (1990), PRIMO (2007, 2008), RECUERO (2004, 2005, 2010), Schlemmer (2002, 2009), VEEN; Vrakking (2009), Warschauer (2012). The research problem of this dissertation is to investigate how a social game, present in the context of digital social media can be constituted as an environment for learning the English language. The objective of this research was to investigate and understand how the interest occurs, as well as the acceptance of the use of a game used as entertainment for learning, analyze the possibilities of harmony between the game and the syllabus of the English curriculum, analyze how participants collaborate with each other during the game and how this collaboration contributes to learning and to analyze and understand how the interactions of the participants with the game may favor the development of communicative competence in second language learning. For this research we used two digital social games The Sims Social and Wetopia present in Facebook, with two groups of students of English. The research approach was qualitative, exploratory in nature and used the case study methodology. Data were collected through the interactions between the participants during the game chats and recorded content present in the wall of the groups created on Facebook as well as on semi-structured interviews after the experiment. As the survey results, it is noted that the digital social games present in the context of a digital social media enable an environment for teaching and learning English Language, favoring its the development, allowing the alingment between classroom and the games, engaging participants in collaborative activities and generating interest intheir learning with and through games. Therefore, this dissertation brings to reflection the socio-cognitive potential in the environment of digital and social games and how such technologies can enable new and different ways of constructing knowledge in English.