The use of gamification in teaching foreign language vocabulary for beginners

Beyond any doubt in today's world, technology occupies a remarkable amount of place in our life. With the increasing use of technology, teachers have started to give a place to gamification and game mechanics into their lessons. EFL teachers have utilized Gamification for different purposes such as for teaching vocabulary and enhancing writing and reading skills etc. The researcher has aimed to report what the effective gamification and English Language Vocabulary Acquisition in ELT Classes is and to measure how the students react to the use of gamification in ELT Classes by an experimental study. The study was conducted to ninth graders in a public school. Paper-based pre-tests, a paper-based and a Kahoot-assisted post-tests and a paper-based questionnaire were used for a control group and an experimental group. The pre-test and post-test were used to measure the difference of students knowledge about the topics, which were determined by the researcher, before and after the education. As is seen in the study, gamification has no significant difference on students' recall of factual knowledge. Still, it has positive effects on motivating students to tasks, students' engagement to the classroom activities more and adding fun to the learning process. Key Words : Gamification, Vocabulary, Pre-test, Post-test, Questionnaire.