Facilitated Play, Target Language Use, and Authenticity

Previous research and informal observations have suggested a number of potential benefits of language play for learning, including positive effects on student use of target language. This mixed-methods research project explores whether a playful approach can help instructors achieve course objectives. It evaluates the relative success of three different orientations toward play in the practice stage: facilitation, encouragement, and indifference. It finds that facilitation resulted in the most play and indifference the least. While play is not strongly correlated with target language repetition in the practice activity itself, there is indication of greater target language internalization with play. Discussion quality was not dramatically different among the three treatment groups, but student questionnaire responses suggest that play is surprisingly linked to sharing more authentic ideas. The study’s conclusion is thus that language play is better thought of as a possible on-task language learner behavior than as off-task diversion. INTRODUCTION Psychologist and education scholar Susan Engel (2016) has recently argued that pleasure should be thought of as integral to learning: “Becoming educated should not require giving up joy but rather lead to finding joy in new kinds of things. ” In Rikkyo University’s English Discussion Class (EDC), students often seem to learn to find joy in discussing various social topics and hearing unfamiliar ideas. Practicing the target language that improves these discussions, on the other hand, requires form-focused repetition that is sometimes less engaging. Language play provides one potential way to make this target language practice more engaging. Previous research on language play suggests that it and associated humor create stronger memories through deeper processing (Bell, 2012; Bushnell, 2008). Language play is thus posited to promote greater internalization through deeper engagement (Poehner & Lantolf, 2005, p. 237), and it provides a way for learners to focus on language forms in an authentic way through this “personal process of engagement” (Cook, 2000, p. 202). Furthermore, Tin (2013) suggests that the creativity involved in language play can “initiate the ZPD, helping learners to ‘stand a head taller than they are’ even in the absence of scaffolding” (p. 388). Other scholars note that play can provide scaffolding through collaboration (Bushnell, 2008; Pomerantz & Bell, 2011). It follows that play has been linked to greater use of target language forms (Bushnell, 2008). Broner and Tarone (2001) also noted the interweaving of play and work, and they identified two overlapping modes of the key concept of language play: rehearsal and fun. As Bell (2012) notes, in both types, it is “the repetition and/or manipulation of L2 forms and meanings” (p. 238). The present study involves repetition, but it primarily fits in the “language play as fun” strain of research that is linked with humor. Humor and laughter can function to promote positive affect, communicate meaning, and relieve tension (Bateson, 1953; Bell, 2011). It follows, then, that humorous language play is linked with lowering affective barriers (Bushnell, 2008). One proposed reason is that it is safe and deniable if one is just kidding (Pomerantz & Bell, 2011). By using humor, learners can commit face-threatening acts while remaining “‘off-record’ in the context of play” (Bushnell, 2008, p. 51). Research suggests that learners recognize some of these positive effects on the language-learning atmosphere (Murphey, Falout, Fukuda, & Fukuda, 2014), although play may also be viewed as illicit behavior. Therefore, van Dam (2002) suggests that teachers should create affordances for play. In my informal observations, this seemed borne out: New Directions in Teaching and Learning English Discussion 144 facilitating language play through designed activities had positive effects on target language output and classroom atmosphere (Kasparek, 2015). This exploratory study investigates these effects more closely. It examines whether a playful approach might help instructors achieve course objectives in a university English discussion class. Specifically, it seeks tentative answers to the following research questions: 1) Can learner language play be facilitated and encouraged by the teacher? 2) Is language play conducive to target language repetition? 3) Does language play promote the internalization of target forms? 4) Do students continue using learned language play strategies at later stages of the lesson? and 5) Is language play correlated with better discussions in any way? All of these questions can be subsumed under this fundamental final research question: Is language play an on-task behavior that teachers should encourage or even facilitate? The Results section will deal with the first five questions, while the Discussion section will focus mainly on the final question, with reference to both the results and theory. METHOD In order to have the maximum number of participants and yield the broadest possible results, I selected all of my Spring 2015 students in the Rikkyo University English Discussion Class (EDC). These students’ Combined Listening and Reading TOIEC scores had placed them in EDC levels 1 (680 or above), 2 (480 to 679), and 3 (280 to 479). The 12 classes were divided into three treatment groups: play facilitation, play encouragement, and control. These groups were balanced as much as possible in terms of level, department background, and teaching sequence; in other words, the grouping attempted to control for learner difference as well as teaching differences as the week progressed. As an exploratory study, this research project was designed to be open to finding a variety of possible differences among the treatment groups, but it was nonetheless guided by theory about language play’s positive role in language learning. This mixed methods research used a concurrent triangulation strategy that involved comparing quantitative and qualitative data (Creswell, 2009). For the quantitative data, language play was operationalized simply as instances of laughter, with no attempt to determine the authenticity of this laughter (Bateson, 1953). Likewise, target language use was determined simply by number of utterances, with rare cases of immediate samespeaker repetition excluded. Data were collected for target language questions and phrases, but these were combined to simplify analysis. Play facilitation involved updated and adapted versions of Kasparek’s (2015) activity for two lessons: Lesson 6 on Examples and Lesson 11 on Possibilities. Audio-recordings of three student interactions in Lesson 6 provide the primary data: the focused practice activity for examples target language, the first discussion after this practice, and the second discussion. Audio-recordings of their final discussion tests months later were also recorded for more detailed analysis. A simple checklist was used to document instances of laughter and target language use at different stages. I also took notes on my interpretation of the interactions, including the types of laughter involved, specific examples of what provoked laughter, and the general quality of target language use. For greater uniformity, detail, and practicality, the following stages were chosen for Lesson 6: three minutes of the practice activity (Px), the first five minutes of the first discussion (D1), the first five minutes of the second discussion (D2.1), and the last five minutes of the second discussion (D2.2). The unit of analysis was the class, and for uniformity, each class’s discussion data were mathematically adjusted for two discussion groups (i.e., the data for the three-group class was multiplied by 2/3, and the data for the one-group class were multiplied by 2). The discussion test