The Effects of Game-based Learning on the Grammatical Accuracy of Iranian High school Students

Teaching grammar has always been a problematic area of language teaching. While teachers spend a great deal of time and energy to teach, the students are not eager to learn as they find it a real chore. This study compared two kinds of activities for teaching grammar: games and traditional exercises. It sought to discover the effect of games on the students’ grammatical accuracy. For this purpose, 61 students of Nikshahr High School for Gifted Students were chosen to participate in the study. They were assigned to two groups: control and experimental. Prior to the study, all the subjects were given the Nelson Proficiency Test to ensure they were homogenous in terms of language proficiency. Then, the experimental group was set to use grammar games in the practice phase of their classes, while the control group practiced through traditional repetition, fill in the blanks, or multiple-choice exercises. Following that, to measure the effect of the treatment, the subjects were post-tested for grammatical accuracy. Then a series of paired- and independent-samples t-tests were conducted to evaluate the hypothesis of the study. The results indicated that there was no significant difference between the two groups although the experimental group had a small advantage over the control group.