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5 de November de 2025By ACHIPANTIZA215

Video Games as a Means to Learn English

Image of white hands holding a blue console controller.

When the use of technology to diversify educational processes began to be considered, educators saw it as an opportunity for pedagogical strategies to address students’ needs (Díaz & Jansson, 2011). These needs were understood within a new reality for generations born in the digital age. According to Martínez et al. (2014), the ability to process images, sounds, and videos more effectively than text, along with the skill to interact online, had to be considered from a pedagogical perspective to improve education. In this regard, Martínez-Bahena et al. (2017) argued that social changes, including educational ones, should be analyzed since students’ abilities to receive content were clearly different, focusing much more on the uses and possibilities of technology. From the perspective of Soler and Lezcano (2009), technology in education addresses not only learners’ needs but also their interests and preferences, which can enhance students’ skills, abilities, and attitudes to foster meaningful learning. Moreover, various theories have been developed that explore human brain functions and how people learn, which have been linked over the years to technology and its possibilities.

One such theory is Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory (cited in Andrade, 2012), which argues that an individual’s learning process occurs through an organized system of information transfer and processing. The brain first acquires the information, receives it in working memory, and then sends it to long-term memory, storing it through schemas so that the knowledge can be applied throughout life. This process implies limitations in a student’s working memory, which can result in information overload if teaching methods are poorly designed. In this sense, Andrade (2012) suggests that technology offers different means to provide information to students and thus avoid content saturation caused by traditional teaching methods. Educational content can therefore be presented to students in ways that consider how the human brain learns and uses knowledge. On the other hand, when discussing technology, it is common to think of audiovisual products that, as the name suggests, provide information by combining two channels: acoustic and visual. In relation to learning, this leads to Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory (1991), which states that the human brain processes and stores information through two distinct memory systems: visual and verbal. In other words, the brain decodes incoming information in a dual manner, building connections to reference knowledge.

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    Video Games as a Means to Learn English

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