Enhancing the learning motivation through learning English vocabularies

Abstract

Motivation is very important for everyone, especially when they are learning a new language. Students who have low motivation will lead to low academic performance. In Hong Kong, schools are mainly focus on academic performance, but less focus on the learning process and students’ motivation. There are a few studies focus on students’ English learning motivation, however the targets are high grade students. Therefore, the needs of lower grade students had been omitted. This capstone project aimed at enhancing the students’ learning motivation for learning English vocabulary through game-based learning and the target participants were primary one student. In order to increase the students’ learning interest and learn to cooperate with other members, the 6-sessions workshop will be used game-based learning, which used different kinds of games and activities to learn twenty vocabulary words, which are chosen from primary two English book. The pronunciation, spelling and meaning of the words were learnt in this workshop. Results showed that the project is effective to increase the learning motivation for learning vocabularies through playing different games and activities in the sessions. However, since the workshop was held in a short period, some participants reported that they do not think they had a big improvement and the difference between the pre-test and post-test were not significant. Therefore, further research is needed to explore how the teachers and parents can help to use game-based learning in their daily life.