Roman palace: a videogame for foreign-language vocabulary retention
Open accessAbstract
The goal of this work was to develop a serious game which would aid in the retention of foreign-language non-contextualized vocabulary items in different age categories. To this end, the loci method was used to enhance visual and spatial memory among the game’s players. The novelty of this proposal lies in the combining of mnemonic strategies with the environment of an exploratory video game. Structurally, this project consists of three main pillars: pedagogical foundations, the development of the serious game, and the evaluation of the game's efficiency through qualitative and quantitative study. The 3D game was developed through the Unity game engine in its version 2020.3. The prototype’s efficiency was assessed quantitatively in an experimental group of 21 participants who were compared with a control group of 27 participants. All the data were displayed in R Studio using the ggplot2 library. The study was complemented with qualitative findings collected through semi-structured interviews with a group of 7 participants. The experimental method proved to be more efficient and more entertaining than the conventional method used in the control group.
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Digital games provide distinctive opportunities for acquiring, retaining, and contextualizing vocabulary.
“Digital games have been found to provide distinctive opportunities for acquiring, retaining, and contextualizing vocabulary [14,17,38].”
From Exploring the relationship between digital gaming, language attitudes, and academic success in EFL university students (2024) · cites this paper as [17]
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- Authors
- Larchen Costuchen, A., Mollá Vayá, R. P., & Dinkova Dimitrova, D.
- Venue
- International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET)
- Published
- 2022-03-14
- Volume
- 17
- Issue
- 05
- Pages
- 87-102
- ISSN
- 1863-0383 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4220964704
- Cited by
- 12
- References
- 33
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 1
- FWCI
- 4.19
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- RiuNet (Universitat Politècnica de València) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Funders
- Universitat de València
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational Games and Gamification
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Second Language Acquisition and Learning
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Multimedia Learning Systems
- Keywords
- serious games, method of loci, spatial memory, visual memory, mnemonic strategies, Unity game engine
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