This slideshow presentation contains descriptions and discoveries related to a specific approach in teaching that was gamified based on the concept of gamification.

1. DEVELOPING SOFT SKILLS THROUGH
GAMIFIED ENGLISH LANGUAGE
ACTIVITIES
(Zombie Challenge Series)
Sirhajwan Idek
Keningau Vocational College

2. Gamification
Elements
Points
Badges
Quest
Levels
Progress bars/Progression
Rules
Rewards
Challenges
Competition
Avatar
Gamification: the incorporation of elements & design of games into non-game context
Video Games
Classroom Activities

3. Problem Statement
• The students lack soft skills
which encompass
communication skills, ability to
work as a team and utilize their
thinking skills to solve problems.
Their limited English language
proficiency hinder their ability to
communicate effectively.
• The teachers were assigned to
teach soft skills as a two day
course but such course can be
too theoretical & less engaging.

4. Objective & Research Question
Objective
To examine the outcomes of a gamified series of activities in the
students’ development of soft skills & English language skills.
Research Questions
1. How did gamified ESL activities enable learners to acquire English
language?
2. Which soft skill that gamification helped the students acquire
most throughout the activities?

5. Why Zombie?

6. Gamify it!
• Enables teachers to design lessons by finding commonalities between
learning and games (Flores, 2015)
• Nurture students’ intrinsic motivation (Landers & Landers, 2014)
• it fosters their social skills - ability to respond to emotions like joy,
frustration, empathy, social rules like taking turns (Fogg, 2002)
• One particular caveat -overreliance on extrinsic motivation - can lead to
declining level of motivation and learning over time (Hanus & Fox,
2015).

7. Methodology
• Six students were randomly selected for an interview session from the
approximately 150 students who took part in the Zombie Challenge Series.
• Average English language proficiency. Their native languages were Dusun,
Bajau, Malay and Chinese.

8. Zombie Challenge Series

9. Level 1: Zombie Escape
You accidentally let zombies out. And you
must get away. With you are the janitor,
the lab assistant, and the old professor.
The only way to safety is across the old
bridge. You can get across in a minute, the
lab assistant needs 2, the janitor needs 5,
and the professor 10. you have 17 minutes
before the zombies catch you. But the
bridge can only hold 2 people at a time and
you need to carry the only one lantern you
have to cross it since it is too dark. Can you
help everyone escape on time?
“Can you solve the bridge riddle” is needed for this
level: https://youtu.be/ZCHou2Ao7XI

10. Scoring System
Criteria Score Cash reward for next task
Correct answer in less than 15
minutes
100 % RM 5,000
Correct answer in more than 15
minutes
70% RM 3,000
Partially correct answer (regardless of
time)
50% RM 500
Wrong answer 30% RM 100
No Answer 0% -

11. Congratulation!
You have earned your badge for the first level, you are
now entering the second level

12. Level 2: Zombie Defense
The zombie broke free from the
laboratory and have reached the cities.
The authority failed to contain the virus
as more people became infected. You
and your team need to find a shelter and
defend yourselves against these
zombies. You got RM 20,000 (Plus the
money you earned from the first level)
to purchase items you need, plan your
budget wisely according to your
priorities.

13. Scoring System
Criteria Score Extra time reward for next
task
Spend at least MYR 18,000 100 % 10 minutes
Spend less than MYR 18,000 50% 5 minutes
Mistakes in spending 30% -
Failure in planning the budget 0 % -
Note: The team can choose not to use the extra time if they do not need it and they are
allowed to submit their budget earlier.

14. Design of Zombie Challenge Series
• Awarding points based on speed &
accuracy causes learners to focus more
on giving answer as quick as they could
than getting it right (Attali, 2015).
• It is more effective if it is used on older
learners (Garland, 2015).
• Garland (2015) was that gamification is
more efficient and achievable if it is in
language classroom for a shorter
amount of time (Garland, 2015).
10 minutes for every
team
Upper Secondary
level
Two days

15. Findings
(Metalinguistic &Metacognitive skills)
Cognitive Skills
Putting things/ideas in
order
Cause & Effect relationship,
possibilities & alternatives
Capabilities & Possibilities
Interpretation, creativity,
decoding skills. Possibilities
Level Language Focus
Level 1: Zombie
Escape
Sequence Connectors
(e.g. first, second, then)
Level 2: Zombie
Defense
Conditionals
(If + simple present)
If we buy a motorcycle, we can easily run
from the zombie
Level 3: Zombie
War
Modal Verbs
(e.g. can, should, may, need)
We need to build barriers, we should
ration our food supply
Level 4: Zombie
Hunt
Anagram
Claste – Castle , unqee – queen, ogfl - golf
The students learnt how to use certain language forms & their functions nurtured their thinking skills

16. Findings
(Soft Skills)
• The students claimed that the hardest thing to do was to reach the final decision
while coping with disagreement, too many ideas, time limit, rules
• Doyle (2018) - decision-making skills as the most essential component of soft
skills yet. There are six steps in decision-making alone:
1. Identifying the details of the issue, opportunity or problem
2. Generating a myriad of feasible solutions.
3. Assessing the risks and benefits of every potential solution
4. Confirming the proper solution or response based on gathered information
5. Implementing the solution
6. Evaluating the impacts

17. Findings (Motivation)
• Muntean (2011) argued that game elements offer students both
intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
Extrinsic Motivation Intrinsic Motivation
Badges & Points Sense of achievement,
autonomy & sense of
belonging

18. Conclusion
• There were very few studies related to gamification in language
learning as most studies in gamification was done on science and
technology fields (Garland, 2015).
• The effects of gamification might not be as desirable as they seem
since there is a possibility that excitement of the game elements
might be caused by a novelty effect (Hamari et al., 2014; Hanus & Fox,
2015).
• Hence more studies are needed on the influence of gamification in
language learning.