Investigating The Effect Of Learners’ Interaction Using The ‘heads Up’ Game On Vocabulary Retention

Résumé: The use of games in education has always been a vivid field of research, especially in the field of foreign languages didactics. Games can be a solution to some of the main problems that EFL learners encounter while learning a foreign language. Vocabulary acquisition and recall are actually one of these problems. This study is conducted with the aim of investigating the effect of classroom interaction using the game 'heads up' on enhancing learners' retention of vocabulary. It also highlights the difference between the interaction with pictures giving clues, and the interaction with peers guessing words. On these bases, it is hypothesized that learners who play the game heads up would have a good memory and recall words whenever they need them. Moreover, it is hypothesized that learners who guess words interacting with their peers would recall words better than those who give hints seeing the pictures. For testing the hypotheses, a quasi-experimental design was used. This research was conducted with a sample of 52 middle school pupils with 26 pupils in the control group and 26 in the experimental group. The former used the traditional method based on tasks provided in this textbook (My Book of English Middle School Year Two) such as fill-in the gaps, finding synonyms and opposites; the experimental group used the game 'heads up'. After using both descriptive and inferential statistics, the results have shown an improvement in the experimental group; students, who used the game 'heads up', recalled better than those who used the traditional method. In addition, the analysis of the data has revealed that pupils who guessed words recalled better than those who gave clues. The use of the game 'heads up' can be useful in order to get rid of other problems that EFL learners can encounter. For instance, one can study the effect of the game 'heads up' on decreasing anxiety, in improving students' fluency and in teaching grammar for beginners.

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