USING GAMIFICATION ELEMENTS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

Abstract

The increasing integration of digital technologies into educational environments has significantly reshaped contemporary approaches to language teaching. Among these innovations, gamification has emerged as a pedagogical strategy aimed at enhancing learner motivation, engagement, and learning effectiveness through the incorporation of game-design elements into instructional contexts. Despite its widespread adoption, there remains a lack of comprehensive empirical studies examining the combined motivational and linguistic effects of gamification in formal higher education language classrooms. The present study investigates the effectiveness of gamification elements in language teaching with particular attention to learner motivation, engagement, and language performance. A mixed-method research design was employed, combining experimental instruction, language proficiency testing, questionnaires, and classroom observation. The findings demonstrate that structured gamification elements, including points, badges, leaderboards, and narrative-based tasks, significantly improve learner engagement, vocabulary retention, and communicative participation. The scientific novelty of the study lies in its integrated analysis of affective and linguistic outcomes within a controlled academic setting. The results provide valuable implications for applied linguistics and modern language pedagogy.