Structuring Narrative in 3D Digital Game‐Based Learning Environments to Support Second Language Acquisition

Abstract: The essay is a conceptual analysis from an instructional design perspective exploring the feasibility of using three-dimensional digital game-based learning (3D-DGBL) environments to assist in second language acquisition (SLA). It examines the shared characteristics of narrative within theories of situated cognition, context-based approaches to SLA, and game studies as a means of developing meaningful, engaging, and instructional gameplay in 3D-DGBL environments. The article concludes with a design rubric proposed for aligning gameplay in 3D-DGBL environments with concise performance objectives in order to support assessable learning outcomes. A theoretical approach for designing 3D-DGBL environments, the essay invites further discussion on the topic and calls for increased research and development in the area. Key words: digital game-based learning, computer assisted language learning, learning environments, serious games, video games The recent MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages report identifies a burgeoning national ''language deficit'' (2007, p. 2) and characterizes the two-tiered configuration that today artificially separates language learning specialists from literature faculty in university foreign language departments as being antiquated and inefficient. The unfortunate upshot of this artificial division is the prevailing curricular model that devalues the early years of language learning while simultaneously monopolizing upper-division language courses in the service of literary studies. Traditionally low enrollments in many foreign languages reveal this division to be particularly unappealing to many university students. Seeking broader and more diverse paths to mastery of a foreign language, students find the current two-tiered configuration to be both stifling and largely irrelevant to major tracks emphasizing the sciences and business. As a corrective to the current two-tiered configuration, the MLA report calls for the adoption of foreign language curricula that can increase the translingual and transcultural competence of a broader range of university students, not just those interested in literary studies. Ideal curricula will be those that ''situate language study in cultural, historical, geographic, and cross-cultural frames; that systematically incorporate transcultural content and translingual reflection at every level; and that organize the major around explicit, principled educational goals and expected outcomes'' (MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages, 2007, p. 5). In an effort to ensure that the study of foreign languages will remain relevant for a networked and digital society in the future, the MLA report additionally calls for foreign language graduate studies to ''provide substantive training in language teaching and in the use of new technologies in addition to cultivating extensive disciplinary knowledge and strong analytic and writing skills'' (p. 7). To wit, the report invites increased efforts to delve into technical and disciplinary fields that traditionally have not been included in the study of foreign languages yet harbor the potential of transforming language departments into more ''meaningful players in higher education'' (p. 3). Seeking to address the technical, interdisciplinary, and instructional needs outlined for language departments in the MLA report, this essay, which is structured as a conceptual analysis from an instructional design perspective, will examine the feasibility of using three-dimensional digital game-based learning (3D-DGBL) environments to assist in second language acquisition (SLA). I pay particular attention to first-person 3D gaming interfaces of the single-player computer roleplaying game (CRPG) genre. Although some parallels can be drawn between this computer game genre and 3D computer-mediated communication (CMC) environments such as Second Life or Quest Atlantis (see Zheng, Young,Wagner, & Brewer, 2009), the types of player experiences fostered by 3D-CRPG are fundamentally different from those fostered by 3D-CMC as the latter supports virtual spaces in which ''cultures and meaning emerge from a complex set of interactions among the participants, rather than as a part of a predefined story or narrative arc'' (Thomas & Brown, 2009, p. …