Computer Games Can Improve English Vocabulary
For years I was told how important a strong vocabulary is, and it took me years to realize just how true that is. Of course you can grow your vocabulary by reading books, newspapers, and hardware review websites. Now researchers at the University of Gothenburg and Karlstad University have proven that playing video games can also strengthen your vocabulary.
For their study, the researchers had 76 children from 10 to 11 years old fill out questionnaires and a language diary, to track encounters with English, outside of school. The boys reported spending an average of 11.5 hours a week playing video games, compared to the girls' 5.1 hour average. The girls however did spend, on average, 11.5 hours a week on online language-related activities, primarily Facebook, while the boys only spent 8 hours a week, on average. It is important to note that for many of these children, their first language was Swedish and they were learning English as a second language. The gamers of the group demonstrated a significantly better English vocabulary than the others, which may be the result of English being commonly used in the games they played, while on Facebook the children could use Swedish instead.
Along with finding the positive impact of playing games, the researchers also identified that MMORPGs were the most effective at developing English vocabulary, thanks to the number of players of interaction between them.