Encouraging Free Play: Extramural Digital Game-Based Language Learning as a Complex Adaptive System

Abstract

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games like World of Warcraft are ideally suited to encourage and facilitate second language development (SLD) in the extramural setting, but to what extent do the language learners’ actual trajectories of gameplay contribute to SLD? With the current propensity to focus research in digital game-based language learning on vernacular games, or commercially-available games that are designed with entertainment in mind, it is vital to focus on the extramural setting in which these games are designed to be played, while still being subject to rigorous and empirical analysis. This paper examines the extramural gameplay and language learning trajectories of four university German language learners as they play World of Warcraft with native German speakers. Positioning learners’ experiences within a complex adaptive systems framework (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008;