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Learnful L2 Gaming: The Wisdom of the Wild

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Language Education in Digital Spaces: Perspectives on Autonomy and Interaction

Part of the book series: Educational Linguistics ((EDUL,volume 52))

Abstract

This chapter discusses the informal practice of learnful L2 gaming, that is, playing a vernacular (commercial, non-educational) game for the intentional, sometimes incidental purpose of L2 use and practice. The introduction discusses the reasons for this widespread practice and the background section surveys associated theory and research, focusing specifically on informal learning, the notions of learnfulness and gamefulness, and L2 learning with games. The chapter then presents a descriptive study that surveys online, informal advice on learnful L2 gaming culled from three openly accessible online forums from 2014–2016: Reddit, Quora, and Duolingo. In brief, users suggested choosing the right game, playing it learnfully, and interacting with others through and around it, suggestions which mirror findings from research and formal practice. Further discussion of this ‘wisdom of the wild’ conclude the chapter, with implications for pedagogy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Some of the data is also discussed in Reinhardt (2019a), but the analysis in that publication is not repeated here but rather supplemented by the presentation below, and the data examples in both are unique.

  2. 2.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quora

  3. 3.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit

  4. 4.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duolingo

  5. 5.

    The three sites were contacted to ask for permission to use posted comments, but they did not respond. It is assumed that because users were posting in publically accessible forums, they were not expecting complete privacy. The boards are entirely accessible without registering as a user, and none of the posts included personal identifiers; all identifiable usernames have been anonymized here.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Jonathon Reinhardt & Yiting Han

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  1. Jonathon Reinhardt
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  2. Yiting Han
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Correspondence to Jonathon Reinhardt or Yiting Han .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Carolin Fuchs

  2. Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies, The Open University, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, UK

    Mirjam Hauck

  3. Ciències de l’Educació, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Melinda Dooly

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Reinhardt, J., Han, Y. (2021). Learnful L2 Gaming: The Wisdom of the Wild. In: Fuchs, C., Hauck, M., Dooly, M. (eds) Language Education in Digital Spaces: Perspectives on Autonomy and Interaction. Educational Linguistics, vol 52. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74958-3_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74958-3_9

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