Adapting Competitiveness and Gamification to a Digital Platform for Foreign Language Learning

Abstract

Due to globalization growth, learning a second language is a necessity to develop in an increasingly demanding multicultural environment. However, at present we still find that some traditional methodologies are still being applied for teaching, which represents a problem for current students, also called digital natives, because these methodologies should adapt to this digital age of technology and knowledge. To solve this problem, a digital resource for foreign language learning was developed taking into account competitiveness and gamification as bases to motivate students and engage them into the course. The objective of this tool is to improve the processing of theoretical information obtained making use of a virtual environment which has competitive activities and gamification elements such as: obtaining medals for completing tasks, user's progress bar and ranking according to the scores obtained, so that students are motivated and improve their learning. This research seeks to analyze the effects of applying competitiveness and gamification in a virtual environment aimed at foreign language learning. It was found that 81.03% of students are more inclined to use gamified digital tools and also 82.76% of students feel more motivated to learn a second language using this methodology.