This master thesis deals with the effects of gamification on student motivation and dialogic speaking performances in an Austrian middle school environment. The aim of the study conducted in the context of this thesis was to find out whether the implementation of game elements into the English lessons of learners in their 3rd and 4th year of learning English at school would have any effects on their intrinsic learning motivation and their performance in a dialogic speaking test.
The research design employed to answer these questions was a within-participants quasi-experimental design combined with a Latin-square design that spanned over the course of two school weeks. Students took part in one gamified lesson sequence and in one non-gamified lesson sequence. Their speaking performances were evaluated before and after the experiment through a pre-test and a post-test, while data on intrinsic motivation was collected by means of an online questionnaire after the experiment.
The results of the study have shown that gamification has a positive impact on intrinsic student motivation. Over 90 % of students demonstrated overall high levels of intrinsic motivation after taking part in the quasi-experiment. Furthermore, the majority of participants stated that they felt more motivated during the gamified week as compared to the English lessons they usually experience at school. Learning outcomes, in contrast, were not influenced by the presence of gamification in teaching in spite of higher levels of motivation. Thus, the addition of game elements into English lessons did not lead to an improvement when it came to dialogic speaking performances compared to non-gamified teaching. It has been found, though, that more motivated students performed better overall, in both, gamified and non-gamified environments. These findings should encourage teachers to focus on increasing and maintaining student motivation in their lessons. Therefore, even though gamification might not impact learning outcomes directly, it may still serve as a useful tool to increase student motivation.