Developing English Grammar

Learning Application based on Gamification

Andhik Ampuh Yunanto

, Yanuar Risah Prayogi

, Siska Arifiani

, Darlis Herumurti

and Siti Rochimah

Department of Informatics and Computer Engineering, Politeknik Elektronika Negeri Surabaya,

Keputih, Sukolilo, Surabaya City, East Java 60111, Indonesia

Department of Informatics, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, Keputih, Sukolilo,

Surabaya City, East Java 60111, Indonesia

Keywords: Learning Application, Gamification, English Grammar Education.

Abstract: In this modern era, there are many applications available in the marketplace, one of which is learning

applications. Even though the current learning application has implemented a good design and features, this

application is just a standard system that simply carries out the rules of the system. This can make users

quickly bored because the elements and elements of the system are less attractive. So that this makes learning

applications in the marketplace unpopular and still below other types of applications. Due to this, this study

develops gamification-based learning applications where applications are built by applying elements that are

commonly applied to a game. The focus of this research is learning English grammar because this material is

very important for students, especially students. Testing is done in a unittest way to see whether the elements

applied to this application have met the gamification element. In addition, this learning application was also

tested on respondents to get feedback. The results show that the application can run smoothly and get positive

feedback from the respondents which has average score 76. So it can be concluded that this research is

expected to be a guide in developing further learning applications and be useful for students, especially

students in learning English Grammar.

1 INTRODUCTION

The widespread use and use of technology today such

as the Internet, social networks and cell phones can

affect the educational process in schools and colleges.

One of the important roles that technology has today

is in terms of education which can make

communication better, the implementation of

information systems becomes more actual, and is

useful as a learning medium. In addition, the latest

technology also supports individual, collaborative

learning, content management, activity management,

formal, informal, and work. One of the most common

education systems supported by information

technology is E-learning (Yunanto, Herumurti,

Kuswadayan, & Rochimah, 2018).

However, the increasing number of learning

applications or e-learning systems that are currently

rampant tends to have monotonous content. Based on

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5137-4473

observations on the Google Playstore, applications

with educational themes have a lower number of

downloads compared to applications with other

themes. One application that is very popular with

young people today is a game or game-based

application.

Game or game-based applications are very

popular among young people today, especially for

children and adolescents. Based on a report from the

Federation of American Scientists, children who are

8-18 spend an average of 50 minutes playing games

per day (Scientists, Federation of American, 2006).

According to the EU kids Online Network, internet

users aged 9-16 years spend 88 minutes per day

online. As well as when children use the internet,

reports show that playing games is the second activity

children often use after completing homework

(Livingstone & Haddon, 2009).

Yunanto, A., Prayogi, Y., Ariﬁani, S., Herumurti, D. and Rochimah, S.

Developing English Grammar Learning Application based on Gamiﬁcation.

DOI: 10.5220/0010962700003260

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Applied Science and Technology on Engineering Science (iCAST-ES 2021), pages 1225-1230

ISBN: 978-989-758-615-6; ISSN: 2975-8246

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

1225

Because of this, many game developers and

researchers use games for specific purposes as well as

entertainment media. One topic that is popular among

researchers is about utilizing the latest technology,

games, and education (Andhik Ampuh Yunanto,

2021). Many recent studies have reported the benefits

of educational computer-based games in promoting

student motivation to learn. Digital game-based

learning has been considered a very potential issue

among various approaches in the development of

learning technology (Yunanto, Herumurti,

Kuswadayan, Hariadi, & Rochimah, Design and

Implementation of Educational Game to Improve

Arithmetic Abilities for Children, 2019). In addition,

games currently being developed also apply modern

technologies such as artificial intelligence (Yunanto,

Herumurti, Kuswadayan, & Rochimah, Intelligent

System for Agent in Educational Game Using

Dynamic Gram Similarity, 2018), computational

intelligence (Herumurti, Kuswardayan, Khotimah,

Yunanto, & Yusuf, 2019), text processing (Yunanto,

Herumurti, Rochimah, & Kuswardayan, 2019),

virtual reality (Herumurti, Yuniarti, Rimawan, &

Yunanto, 2019 ), and game simulation (Kuswadayan,

et al., 2019).

Since the era of globalization launched by the

world, especially for ASEAN, interactions between

countries have become more open and freer. For this

reason, the ability of foreign languages such as

English is one of the abilities that must be owned by

everyone, especially young people. However, based

on existing surveys, the English language skills

possessed by most students are still very minimal and

lacking.

This can be seen from the TOEFL test results that

have been followed by students where the scores

obtained tend to be below standard. For example, a

survey shows that 70% of new students score below

477. Not only that, not a few final year students also

have difficulty completing the judicial requirements

due to the failure of the TOEFL test. So that most

students fail to graduate for that reason. This is a very

basic problem and must be resolved in Indonesia

immediately.

From the description above shows that currently

an effective and efficient learning approach is needed

to teach English education to students in order to face

the era of globalization. Therefore, this study builds a

game-based learning approach. This research focuses

on developing game-based English grammar learning

applications. This study aims to improve the user's

ability to master English grammar in a more fun way.

This research is also useful for students in helping to

do the TOEFL test, especially for grammar material.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Gamification

From 2010 until now, a new trend called gamification

has emerged. Gamification can be defined as the use

of game design elements to motivate player behavior

in a non-game context (Deterding, 2011). According

to Dominguez, gamification is the act of combining

game elements into non-game software applications

to improve user experience and engagement

(Dominguez, et al., 2013). Gamification has been

implemented in many different domains in recent

years in an effort to improve the work and

performance of developers in their daily development

tasks (Hugos, 2012). Gartner Corporation predicts

that more than 50% of organizations will undertake a

process of innovation towards games as gamification

that provides accelerated feedback, clear objectives

and challenging tasks by 2015 (Gartner, Inc., 2011).

According to the Bureau, gamification has some

elements common to the theory of learning behaviors

such as positive help or support, small or simple tasks,

prompt feedback, and progressive challenges (Biro,

2014). Education-based gamification also

implements the use of a game rule system such as

player experiences and cultural roles that are used to

shape student behavior (Sua & Cheng, 2013).

3 METHOD

This research has several phase including the design

phase, implementation phase, and testing phase.

1. Design Phase

The design stage includes the process of preparing the

materials needed to build the application. One of the

things needed to build a game-based application is an

asset. Figure 1 shows the assets used in the study.

Besides these assets, there are other assets such as

backgrounds, objects, and so on

Figure 1: Character Assets.

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Table 1: Examples of English grammar questions and

answers.

Level Question

Type

Question Answer

Option

1 Sentence

has a

subject and

a verb

… was

backed up

for miles on

the freeway.

a. Yesterday

b. In the

morning

c. Traffic

d. Cars

2 Object of

Preposition

With his

friend …

found the

movie

theatre.

a. has

b. he

c. later

d. when

3 Appositive … , Andhik,

is attending

the lecture.

a. Right now

b. Happily

c. Because

of the time

d. M

frien

After making and collecting the assets needed, a

dataset of English questions and answers has been

collected. The English questions taken were grammar

questions. The questions are obtained from several

sources such as the TOEFL questions in the TOEFL

book and on sites about learning English grammar.

Examples of questions and answers to be used are

shown in Table 1. These questions and answer keys

are taken from the author of Deborah Phillips' book

entitled "Longman Complete Course For the TOEFL

Test" which is often used by Tutoring Institutions as

a TOEFL study guide.

2. Implementation Stage

This game-based application development uses the

Unity game engine with the C # programming

language. The database used is SQLite so that it can

be planted directly on the device. The implementation

of this game will have fighting gameplay that is

inserted with English Grammar questions. In the

game, users are asked to answer existing questions in

order to fight against their enemies. If the question the

user answers is correct, the character's attack power

will increase. On the other hand, if the questions are

answered incorrectly, the character strength will

decrease. Figure 2 shows the general flow of the game

applied to the application.

Figure 2: The general flow of the game.

3. Testing Phase

After the game development has been completed, the

game will be subjected to unit testing or unit testing

to find out whether the system is running smoothly or

not. If the system is running normally, it will then be

tested on the user to get feedback.

4 RESULT AND DISCUSSION

In this study, after carrying out the implementation,

testing was carried out to obtain results and

conclusions. This test focuses on testing the

performance of the system that is built and focuses on

the feedback provided by the user. So that in this

study, several testing scenarios were carried out so

that the results obtained were relevant to this research.

In addition, after obtaining the test results, a

discussion is also conducted regarding the advantages

and disadvantages compared to other research or

applications.

The test scenario consists of 2 types, namely unit

tests and user tests. For the first one a unit test will be

carried out. Unit test is a system per unit test where to

find out whether the unit or feature can run properly

or not. An example of a game display interface is

shown in Figure 3 until Figure 6.

Figure 3: Interface of main menu.

Developing English Grammar Learning Application based on Gamiﬁcation

1227

Figure 4: Interface of level difficulty.

Figure 5: Interface of battle gameplay.

Figure 6: Interface of battle result.

Figure 3 until Figure 6 shows that game-based

applications can run smoothly. So that the unit test is

deemed sufficient. Furthermore, user testing is

carried out to find out the feedback from users

regarding this game that has been built. Tests were

carried out by 27 users who had ages 21-25. The value

provided by the user is from the number 1 to 10. This

score was categorize by design application element

and education element. After the user give us the

feedback, the results are averaged in order to get the

final score.

During testing, we asked 27 users several

questions to find out how the performance of this

developed application was. Some questions concern

the application design, namely reusability, user

interface, gameplay while the educational elements

include the questions displayed, the difficulty level,

and the variety of questions. The average results of

this test are shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Feedback score from users.

Qualit

Characteristic

Avera

Design Application 7,38

Education Element 7,83

Average 7,60

Table 2 shows that the value obtained from the

game application design elements has an average

value of 7.38. This indicates that the game-based

application has been accepted by the user. However,

this result is still not getting enough interest from

users. Based on questions and answers from users, the

application that is built can still be improved

regarding its UI and UX to make it more attractive.

In addition, the results for educational materials

scored 7.83. This means that the material

implemented in the game application has received a

positive response from users. However, this score

could still be improved if the questions given were

more varied and more graded. According to the

Questions and Answers, the questions given were too

simple and less challenging. So that furthermore, it is

also necessary to add questions related to English

grammar from easy to difficult levels.

The average value of 7.60 shown also means that

the game application has been accepted by the user.

However, based on the analysis received, this game

application is still not suitable for publication on the

marketplace. So that the main advice given by users

is to improve this game application to make it even

more interesting.

However, even though the feedback is shown like

that, user responses also give appreciation that the

application being developed is a good idea as a form

of innovation. Hope in the future, this game-based

application can become a real product that can

combine elements of education and elements of

entertainment into one. So that users who play it don't

feel bored to continue learning through the

application.

From the results of this study, there are several

advantages and disadvantages that can be identified.

For advantage, this research is an alternative that can

be implemented to assist the education sector in a

more interactive way. When compared to ordinary

learning applications on the marketplace, these

learning applications are still monotonous. But with

this research, it can be an alternative and solution to

solve these problems. On the other hand, for case

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studies of learning English, a lot of application has

not implemented the game elements in the

application. In addition, this research or this

application built not only in desktop platform but also

in mobile platform which is show in Figure 7 and

Figure 8.

Figure 7: Interface of game level in android device.

Figure 8: Interface of battle result in Android device.

On the other hand, this research also has some

disadvantages. One of them is that the developers or

researchers are working harder in developing the

application. This is because the abilities that must be

considered are not only about the learning application

but also the game media. Of course this makes the

development of this application take longer than

standard applications. In addition, regarding the

results of the implementation, this research is still

considered to be less conclusive compared to studies

related to educational games. In terms of complexity,

this study still looks very simple compared to other

studies. On the other hand, this study was only tested

on 27 users. So that in the future this research can be

improved and developed to make this research has

better result.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The conclusions obtained from this study include the

development of English grammar learning

applications that can be implemented smoothly on

desktop and mobile systems. The feedback provided

by the user also shows good and acceptable results.

Besides that, the application that was built can also

help users to learn English grammar in different ways.

The next development for this research is to increase

the complexity of the game system so that it is more

diverse and has more content. In addition, increase

the number of English grammar questions in order to

make the questions more varied.

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