International students at English-medium universities in Australia whose first language is not English often struggle with language learning due to challenges sustaining motivation and managing anxiety, while simultaneously needing to strengthen their English skills to succeed academically and fully engage in university life. Although serious games are increasingly used in second-language education, many are not explicitly grounded in established pedagogical strategy frameworks, and grammar-focused serious board games remain underrepresented. In response, this study designed a strategy-embedded serious board game (The Pyramid of Time) that integrates Oxford’s indirect Language Learning Strategies to support grammar-focused practice. Following a Design Thinking process informed by desk-based evidence and refined through two rounds of playtesting, the final prototype was evaluated in a single-session, between-subjects quasi-experiment with 64 international L2 English students studying in Australian English-medium universities, comparing a collaborative board-game condition with an individual textbook self-study condition. Outcomes were assessed using pre- and post-measures of grammar test performance, language learning motivation, and grammar-learning anxiety. The strategy-embedded, collaborative game-based condition showed larger short-term gains in grammar test performance and more favourable changes in motivation and anxiety than the individual textbook self-study condition. An exploratory bootstrapped mediation analysis was consistent with an indirect pattern in which anxiety reduction related to grammar gains primarily via increased motivation, although evidence was modest. Findings provide initial support for theory-informed, strategy-embedded game-based instruction as a promising approach for grammar-focused practice that also improves learners’ short-term motivational and affective experiences. These results should be interpreted in light of differences in instructional format, collaborative structure, and time-on-task across conditions.
Tafti et al. (Fri,) studied this question.