EXPLORING THE ROLE OF GAMIFICATION IN LEARNING VOCABULARY

Abstract

Throughout humanity's civilization, games have attempted to fill essential gaps in daily life. Games have been used as a tool for increasing communication between people, teaching life norms, and solving difficulties since ancient times. Through games, both children and adults learn their duties and begin to build their own tactics to attempt to overcome the challenges they encounter. Children learn to speak and engage through games during their early years. Play may be viewed as a form of self expression for children throughout this time period. Games are important instruments for supporting physical, mental, cognitive, and psychological development throughout childhood (Deterding et al., pp. 9–15, 2011). Due to the important role of gamification in education, in this study, it is aimed to explore students' achievements, attitudes and perspectives on gamification in vocabulary learning. The research was carried out with the participation of 23 students aged 10 years. In the study, which lasted for six weeks in total, students were given vocabulary lessons with applications such as 'Kahoot, Wordwall, Taboo and Pictionary'. At the beginning and end of the practice, a questionnaire was administered to the students to measure their attitudes, 'the Word Test' to measure their success, and a reflective journal to learn their perspectives. According to the Questionnaire and the Word test results, a significant difference was observed in both achievement and attitude of the students in the pre- and post-test comparisons. The data collected with the reflective journal were categorized and it was examined that students' perspectives on gamification were positive.