“Serious Games for Reinforcing Second Language Acquisition in a Classroom through VR and RPG” Eduardo Augusto Esqueche Larrabure Abstract Foreign language acquisition and its reinforcement is a current challenge in many countries facing a high migration flux, where many idiomatic backgrounds gather in public spaces. As school teachers might struggle to find time and educational resources to support young learners in their language acquisition, the possibilities and advantages of video games for learning, also in a Virtual Reality interface, offer a playful, entertaining and digital tool for teachers and kids. Nevertheless, proper instruction of teachers on the use of Virtual Reality gaming is absent, and sometimes logistic, mediarelated and school curricula backgrounds are not thoroughly considered. This thesis postulates the possibilities of Serious Games in the Role-Playing-Game genre for reinforcing second language acquisition in school students with a migration background, while employing the Virtual Reality interface and considering teacher and school staff contexts and backgrounds. To achieve this goal, this thesis offers the conceptualization of a Serious Game in the Role-Playing-Game genre with a Virtual Reality Interface in Chapter 3, called A City Hero. This thesis considers the academic fields of Serious Games, Game Studies, and Media Studies to offer a solid theoretical framework. In Chapter 1, it refers to different academic approaches and reflections on Serious Games, while giving examples of the use of Serious Games and Virtual Reality for language and school content learning. This thesis also relies on academic articles on the employment of Virtual Reality and its interactivity and immersion possibilities compared to keyboard and mouse. It proposes the Google Cardboard as a teacher-friendly and economic option to implement VR gaming in classrooms, as also noted in academic articles. The second chapter offers insights on the interaction, narrativity, player-avatar identification, immersion, and non-textual-feedback affordances of digital Role-Playing Games, and how this genre has proved to be efficient for foreign language acquisition in the hearing and reading competences. Both findings of Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 are merged into the conceptualization of A City Hero in Chapter 3¸ where different Game Design aspects for this game are considered and proposed, based on this thesis’s academic findings. This document aims offering education staff, teachers, media and game researches, and the general public, solid and practical examples on the advantages of serious Virtual Reality Gaming, using the Role-Playing-Game genre, in order to consider them in school projects and language curricula planning.
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