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L2 Gamers’ Use of Learning and Communication Strategies in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOs)
although this may be attributable to the fact that they were asked to use only English while playing the
game. As for self- and peer corrections, participants were simply told to play the game together and to
use English. Therefore, the low occurrence of peer-correction may be because they did not notice the
errors made, saw no reason to comment on the errors they did notice, avoided peer-correction as it was
perceived as face-threatening (Firth & Wagner, 2007). Although players did modify the form of their
output as discussed above, the modifications were not counted as corrections because they were implicit
and embedded in the communication. Texts were counted as corrections only when one of the players
immediately self-corrected or explicitly corrected a peer.
Requesting information and checking information are two communication strategies that the partici-
pants used to negotiate both environmental input and player-produced input. Researchers have stressed
the importance of negotiation of meaning as an important aspect of SLA (Long, 1996; Swain, 1985;
Varonis & Gass, 1985). The L2 learners in this study were exposed to environmental input that seemed
above their level of English proficiency, but it is impossible to know from the recorded data exactly what
they did and did not understand. At the same time, it was clear that they were putting in a very strong
effort to make sense of the virtual world. At times, participants would have difficulties in understanding
exactly what another player was asking or trying to tell them. From these instances, players would engage
in negotiation of meaning in order to reach an understanding of the intended messages.
Negotiation of this sort is referred to as human input in this study. If negotiation is key to language
acquisition, then MMOs like Guild Wars 2 can be beneficial in that they provide many opportunities
for L2 gamers to negotiate meaning. It was common to observe participants come to an understanding
of the environmental input through their communication to one another as a group. The negotiation of
environmental input is arguably a process that is very similar to the negotiation that takes place in face-to-
face conversations. Obviously, the participants could not negotiate with the source of the environmental
input because it is a computer program, so they would negotiate meaning from language presented from
in-game tasks by communicating with each other instead. This negotiation of environmental input most
often took place via requests for information. For example, during one of the sessions, a participant in-
dicated that he did not know how they were supposed to proceed in completing a task and messaged the
group writing, “I have no idea about this task.” Later he requested information from the other players by
writing, “How to finish this?” The players then worked out the details of the task by pooling information
until they eventually formed a plan and tried it out. Of course, there were times when the tasks were too
difficult, causing the players to give up and move on to a different task.
An example of negotiation of environmental input is illustrated in the conversation between par-
ticipants in Example 5. At this point in the game, the participants were struggling to complete tasks
because enemies were killing their characters much more quickly than previous sessions, and they
could not understand why their characters were suddenly so weak. What they did not realize was that
they needed to “repair” their characters’ equipment to return their characters to their full strength. This
maintenance of in-game equipment is a common mechanic in many digital games. As players engage in
combat, their characters’ equipment suffers and eventually breaks. Once broken, players need to go to
one of the game’s towns to have equipment repaired, thereby returning their characters to full strength.
At this point in the game, the participants’ equipment had become completely destroyed because they
had never had it repaired. When equipment breaks, the broken equipment is automatically removed,
leaving the players’ characters appearing shirtless (see Figure 5). This visual que coupled with much
negotiation among participants eventually led to the discovery of this game mechanic, and the players
realized that they had to have their equipment repaired. This instance of negotiation of environmental
input is illustrated in Example 5.