Digital Teaching in the EFL Classroom: The Correlation Between Quizizz and Students' Motivation

Abstract

Digital games are increasingly involved in students’ daily activities, both in their leisure time and in their learning environments. Digital games can transform the English learning into an engaging and entertainment experience. Gamification in the educational context has been examined during the last years in order to foster learners’ motivation since motivation plays a significant role in language learning success and failure. The main objective of the study was to give insight in how digital games affect students’ motivation through the comparison of traditional and digital methodologies. Moreover, this paper was aimed at discovering the attitudes of students towards the integration of digital learning methods in class. The study was conducted over three sessions, the first week of March 2020 with a sample of 51 students from a state school located in a town near Castellón, Spain. Participants were divided into two groups. The experimental group completed the exercises using a digital game called Quizziz, while the students in the control group were taught with the conventional method. The instruments of the study were a Motivation’s Questionnaire and an Attitude’s Questionnaire. After analysing the data, the findings indicated that the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of students in the experimental group were higher than those of the control group. Besides, the results revealed that students hold a favourable attitude towards introducing digital games in language learning. Therefore, it can be concluded that digital games can be used to improve students’ motivation in learning English. Finally, the study provides suggestions for further research in this area such as discovering at what point learners will become bored when playing Quizziz or examining factors such as age, gender and background.