The effect of language games on learning irregular past tense verbs: A study with 9th grade Turkish students

Learning irregular verbs is a challenging and difficult process for Turkish EFL learners. Due to their complex and unpredictable form and dissimilarity to Turkish rule-governed morpheme system, Turkish EFL learners have always trouble with them. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of language games as a learning tool in order to increase irregular verbs retention among 9th grade Turkish English foreign language students.For this purpose, a study which endured 47 days, consisting pretest-posttest-delayed posttests stages was designed. The subjects consists of 72 9th grade students, from an Anatolian Technical High School whose English is at elementary level participated the study. The subjects were assigned to two experimental groups, namely game group and traditional group, and a control group. At the beginning of the study, a pretest on English irregular verbs was applied to all students in order to determine target twenty unknown irregular verb. These irregular verbs were instructed in four training sessions to game and traditional groups. A remedial teaching was applied to these groups to reinforce the retention of these irregular verbs. The game group practiced the relearned irregular past tense verbs through language games while the traditional group practiced them through traditional structural drills. The control group did not receive a remedial teaching process; they learned irregular verbs from their course book with their teacher.Data were collected via tests and analyzed using one-way ANOVA and Shefee test to see the effectiveness of language games while learning irregular verbs in short and long term. The statistical analysis of the data revealed that the game group who received remedial teaching through language games for irregular verbs outperformed the traditional group who relearned the irregular verbs through traditional exercises and the control group who did not receive any remedial teaching in both short and long term. For the game group, no significant decrease was observed on the scores of posttests applied at the end of three weeks and six weeks. On the other hand, significant decrease was observed on the traditional and control group in long term process. The study showed that language games are an effective tool while learning irregular verbs.