On The Application Of Simulation Games To Oral English Class For English Majors

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the appropriateness and efficacy of using simulation games for increasing intercultural sensitivity and oral English competence specifically for undergraduate English language majors.Conventional FLT approaches either focus on practicing language for its own sake or on specific micro-skills and usually have the native language speaker as the ultimate goal, which is both unrealistic and constraining. Due attention has not been paid to enhancing students'intercultural communication competence, especially the affective domain-intercultural sensitivity (Chen & Starosta, 2001). Now with English evolving into an international language and intercultural communication competence as the goal of FLT, new approaches/methods are called on to accommodate such a change.Simulation gaming, a very effective training method in addressing cognitive and affective learning issues and widely used in intercultural training programs, may answer such a call. Though in the past few years, language educators have been integrating simulation games into EFL/ESL syllabus, no study was found integrating simulation games into oral language classes.This thesis attempts to fill this void by incorporating simulation games into oral English course and measuring their effects on students'intercultural sensitivity and oral English competence.A group of second year English language majors were given an oral English course incorporating simulation games. A pre- and posttest were conducted on them to measure the group's change (if any) in intercultural sensitivity. In the posttest students were also asked whether simulation gaming increased their oral English competence and how they rated it as a learning method. The data from the two tests were then analyzed with the data tool SPSS. The research results show that students average an increase of 0.28 for ISS score. Though the change is not as dramatic as expected, it supports the hypothesis that the use of simulation games in FL class is able to enhance FL learners'intercultural sensitivity. Also it is found that simulation gaming is effective in engaging students in meaningful and longer oral English communication.