LUCIOLE: a digital game to enhance oral comprehension skills for primary school learners
Résumé
Input-based foreign language acquisition theories (Krashen, 1982 ; Bybee 2008) assume that foreign languages, like the native language(s) (Lieven & Tomasello, 2008), are acquired essentially through exposure to oral language. Van Patten (2002), however, shows that simple exposure is not enough, and that learners need to be taught how to listen with structured listening activities to make sure they really process the input. Some French studies (Audin, 2003) indirectly come to the same conclusion by showing that after four years’ instruction, many French learners cannot understand new sentences. The results of international evaluations also point to French students’ listening comprehension difficulties in English (European Commission, 2012).
The FLUENCE project (funded by the French Ministry of Education and Research) aims to design a digital game to develop primary school learners’ listening comprehension skills. Games can increase motivation to learn (Oblinger, 2004) and encourage learners to take more risks in an environment in which mistakes have no serious consequences (Gee, 2003).
As players progress through the scenario of the game (10 hours for each class level) they will complete realistic tasks suitable for child learners. These tasks will mainly involve oral stimuli recorded by native speakers, to which the learners will respond by selecting the corresponding graphic items. The purpose of each task is to develop linguistic and cultural knowledge and skills identified in the official instructions for English in primary school (MEN 2015 and 2016). They can also be adapted from other oral tasks found in the literature. The complexity of the activities will gradually increase, and it will be possible to complete each task at different levels in order to adapt to the diversity of learners, for example by using slightly more complex lexical and grammatical exponents.
We will present the context of the project, explain the different steps of game design, and detail the specifications of the game.
Nous présentons la conception d’un jeu sur tablette pour travailler la compréhension orale en anglais chez les enfants francophones. La métaphore ludique (des enfants agents secrets qui doivent retrouver des animaux) permet de motiver les élèves et de contextualiser les éléments linguistiques et culturels choisis parmi les objectifs proposés par les instructions officielles pour l’apprentissage des langues étrangères aux cycles 2 et 3. Pour s'affranchir de l'écrit, ces tâches font uniquement intervenir des stimuli audio, auxquels l'apprenant devra répondre par la sélection d'items graphiques. Nous expliquons comment la conception des activités correspond, du côté didactique, à une approche d’écoute structurée, et du côté ludique, à des techniques de « jeu sérieux ».
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