Digital Games in Language Learn?ng and Teach?ng
Abstract
Buse Pekdemir,
The book gives readers some interesting ideas of digital games and environments both theoratically and practically. In the fist part, it deals with the theoratical terms of digital games and their features by short studies which are investigating their effectiveness and usability in language learning and teaching processes. In the second part, it presents some certain ideas about different types of digital games and game developments then explain their ways of teaching/learning processes with different types of studies.
The chapters of the book were written mostly as an article and have research studies about different ways of digital games. This provides the book valid data which is a good quality for a book. Also the book has a mixture of different ideas which makes learner awake throughout reading the book. Each chapter has a different topic and interesting ideas, terms, studies and informations about its main theme which is quite beneficial for the reader. The whole book discuss and compares some theoratical ideas about digital game based language learning&teaching with the terminology of teaching&learning a language.
However, there are some criticism about the book. Its order of articles in chapters are too complex to follow. Because you cannot follow the ideas in each chapter one by one. You have to read one chapter to understand an idea otherwise you cannot find the same idea in other chapters. Each chapter gives different information about digital games’ world. This structure of design makes reader tired to make connections about the main theme. Moreover, the studies in each chapters are given with too many details instead explaining the main theme in detail. That makes a kind of blank for the reader’s comprehension. As a final idea, the book should be ended with a final explanation from the editor. He may summarise the core of articles and their written purposes to be able to combine the ideas with his own words.
Except these criticism, the book is quite useful to get some terms related to digital game- based language learning and teaching. Besides, its language pretty understandable to read even though they have lots of terminological information. So it doesn’t take a lot of time to read it. With all of these contents, the book can be considered as a good resource for investigating digital game-based language learning and teaching and it can be used for teaching some certain materials to the learners who are seeking for a good structured language teaching digital games.
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