LEARNING ENGLISH IS FUN! INCREASING MOTIVATION THROUGH VIDEO GAMES

In this paper we present a study made with 16 university students with different levels of proficiency in English, who were divided into two groups: those with a basic level (B1 or lower) and those who had an advanced one (B2 or higher). These two groups had the opportunity to get to know and interact with a serious game developed in the ?Universidad Politecnica de Madrid? with the aim of helping in the teaching-learning process of English as a foreign language. Before and after the interaction, all students were interviewed on various aspects related to the English learning process. Although the results show some differences in the two groups, they mainly agree in that the use of the video game greatly increases their motivation to learn English, even though they also consider that they would be able to reach the same English level studying in a more traditional way. In addition, when the students were straightly asked about the usefulness of the video game to learn English, their answers in a graded scale of agreement, ranging from 1 to 5, had an average value of 3.76.