Correlation between Frequency of Playing and Result of Vocabulary
46 Besides the MMRPOGs allowed language to be situated, the MMRPOGs
had chat rooms to increase the students’ vocabulary mastery. Gee 2005 stated that some online games have chat room to communicate. In the chat rooms, the
students as players could discuss and share some things with the other players. They interacted with other players and applied the words. This made the students’
vocabulary mastery increase. Warschauer and Ken 2000 defined that the net chat or the chat room was ideal communication tools and networking tools, because it
provided the players medium both to convey thought and negotiate with others, which made the chat room particularly useful for second language acquisition.
The chat rooms were not only places for the students as the players to apply the words but they also placed to form learning communities. The students who
played online games can form new forms of learning communities because in MMRPOGs like World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, and others, people were creating
new ways to build and share knowledge for the better or the worse. The gamer students played online games which were MMRPOGs because
these games were interesting. Online games were games that had 2d3d graphics, sound, animation, and rules to play. Besides, it could include a storyboard or
storyline, and it can be single player or multiplayer through the internet or computer network. MMRPOGs were new classes of online games Yee, 2006.
Based on Zhuang et. al 2007, MMRPOGs are computer games where thousands of players interact with each other online in persistent virtual world. Massively
Multiplayer Online Role Play Games had good graphic 2D or 3D video games, allowed individuals to make avatars or digital characters to interact not only with
47 the gaming software, but also the other players. The gamer students could make
their own characters as they wanted. They played virtual roles in online games. Online games could simulate authentic learning experiences. It aims that games
provided the gamer students to demonstrate the words and experienced it. For example, the gamer students played a role as a police or a terrorist in Counter
Strike. The gamer students learned vocabulary about guns, kinds of bombs, and command words. The gamer students learned the vocabulary of the games. The
visual animation and graphic that the MMRPOGs offered helped the gamer students to learn the vocabulary of the games.
The gamer students played online games because they felt that online games were fun. Games had often been used to give motivation to the gamer
students and made gamer students practice the words because games had been conceptualized as “the fun factor” of language learning. The students expected
their learning environment could be fun. Online games could engage the gamer students with the narrative story in them. Not all of the online games had story
boards but most of MMRPOGs usually had a story board. They increased the gamer students motivation to learn second language, because they thought that
they were new fun way of learning second language. MMRPOGs used ongoing storyline, there would be new goals to achieve and the games would continue.
These made the students were motivated to learn the words. Sometimes the students didn’t realize that they learned while they were playing online games.
The implicit learning had done in playing online games increase their vocabulary mastery.
48 There were some findings about the influence of online games on language
learning and teaching. Ghanbaran and Ketabi 2014, found that games could increase vocabulary mastery of students because games had aspects to increase
motivation and foster a deeper process ing of vocabulary’s students. Turgut and
Irgin 2009 did a research in Turkey and revealed that the students who played online games had better performance of language skills, most in vocabulary skill.
These claims were applied in this research. On the other hand, Anderson and Dill 2000 assumed that online games
decreased the students’ achievement. Craton n.d. also said that online games usually affect the students, so they got poor academic performance Assosiation
for Christians in Students Development, personal communication, November 1, 2014. That issue did not apply in this study. In fact, the result of the research
showed that the online games indeed increased the students’ achievement in
vocabulary mastery of junior high school students. This finding could break the assumption of the people that online games had negative effect on students’
vocabulary learning. Table 4.3 showed the result of Pearson product moment correlation by
using SPSS 20. The result showed that the significance correlation between the frequency of playing online games and students’ vocabulary mastery was
moderate. However, Figure 4.2 showed the frequency of playing online games and students’ vocabulary mastery.
49