Currently, there are a variety of media and tools available to assist students in learning English, particularly in the context of reading skills. One of them is video games. They can be helpful especially for non-native speakers. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the perceptions of undergraduate students regarding the use of interactive video games
as tools for influencing their English reading skills, and to investigate how playing interactive video games influences their reading skills. To achieve the research objectives, this study formulated two research questions: (1) what were the students’ perceptions of interactive video games as tools for influencing English reading skills? And (2) how did
playing interactive video games influence reading skills? The participants of this study were 57 EFL undergraduate students from any major who regularly played English-language video games around 7-10 hours per week. The data of this study were the responses of their perceptions on playing video games to influence their reading skills. In
the data collection, students were asked to fill in a questionnaire containing 36 items to see their perception of video games on their reading skills. Furthermore, 5 of the 57 students were interviewed to reconfirm and strengthen the questionnaire results. The data were analyzed based on three aspects: students' perceptions on video games as a tool to influence vocabulary acquisition, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. The results showed that the students had very positive perceptions that video games as tools influenced their reading skills covering vocabulary, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. Their reading skills were influenced through the video games’ features
like dialogue text, instruction, quest, visual, and character/item description, the types of video games, motivation, and reading strategies implemented while they were playing video games. This study suggested educators to integrate interactive video games as
instructional tools into English learning activities. |