This dissertation aims to integrate various learning approaches, i.e., multiple literacies, experiential learning, game-enhanced learning, and global simulation, into an extracurricular module, in which it remodels traditional ways of teaching input, specifically, the lexical- and grammatical-only approaches of business English at a private university in Bangkok, Thailand. Informed by those approaches, a game-enhanced simulation was specifically designed as an experiential space for L2 learners to experience the dynamic and real business contexts of language use. A strategy-simulation video game, RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 Platinum (RCT3), was selected and used in the implementation of the pilot course. The game was embedded in a global simulation of two amusement park companies – where students worked in groups of five to form characters and socially interact with others. The global simulation involved learners in a sequence of genre-based (e.g., memoranda and business presentations) and technology-based tasks (e.g., using Gmail, Google Docs, and LinkedIn). Ten second-year students from five disciplines – Accounting, Logistics Engineering, Technology and Creative Business, Logistics Management, and Airline Business Management, participated in the study. Within this game-enhanced simulation, it turned out that each student simulated the role of a department head that was relevant to her or his discipline, for example, department heads of Financial Management, Technical Service Management, Customer Relationship Management, Legal and Operations Management, and Human Capital Management. The findings show that the learners' interactivity within the gameplay depicted the pedagogical affordances of RCT3 for a business English simulation, that is, exploratory interactivity, goal-orientedness in gameplay, goal-orientedness for roleplaying, and emergent narratives. The data present how this videogame features an interplay between two game perspectives – ludology and narratology. That is, ludic affordances in RCT3 could be activated in a narrative system: meaningful personal or emergent narrative by well-designed global simulation tasks. The simulations were established through students’ interpretation and creativity in gameplay and roleplay as related to their disciplines. Moreover, the game-enhanced simulation appeared to provide learners with an effective social context for promoting global English development and professional identity formation, which moved them beyond the learning practices of traditional coursebooks and classroom settings. Students of the study had opportunities to use professional Discourses related to their disciplines as ways to establish their desired identities within the simulated global workplace.

In spite of the increased emphasis since being designated by the United States National Security Language Initiative (NSLI) as one of the sixteen critical languages, the number of students studying Turkish at the university level is small (MLA, 2015). During implementation of this project, several problems unique to Turkish arose. According to the Defense Language Institute (DLI), the degree of difficulty for English language speakers to learn Turkish is greater than that of most European languages because of the vast cultural differences between the United States and Turkey. There is one commonly used textbook at the university level across the United States (Öztopçu) which succeeds in delivering the teaching materials suitable for a traditional classroom but fails to provide opportunities for students to develop cultural and communicative competence. Additionally, it fails to offer digital technology, such as online study materials, which many students would prefer to have included in their academic studies (ECAR, 2014). The Turkish Global Simulation (TGS) project offers a solution: the development of effective teaching materials that would provide students access to the Turkish language and culture using the latest technologies that students already use and enjoy. The TGS was based on the French Apartment Building (Dupuy, 2006a, 2006b), which exemplifies relevant task-based instruction. The French Apartment Building project helps students attain communicative competence and cultural literacy through books and web resources, and focuses on improving students' reading and writing skills. The TGS allows students to experience a virtual life as a tenant in an apartment building in Istanbul. This is accomplished with the use of web applications (Facebook, Google Earth, Google Docs, Google Voice, emails, Blogger, chats, text messages, podcasting, audio-video files, 3-D maps, and Google Bookmarks), and authentic materials (e.g. movie/music clips). I delivered the tasks and the materials—in accordance with the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) standards—through the TGS project, which was first piloted and run successfully for several years to teach second-year second-semester university Turkish learners. The project involves a semester-long simulated life in a Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) environment, and promotes cultural and communicative competence while motivating students to be virtually connected to a new culture, autonomous, and lifelong learners. The specific research questions address: 1. How does the TGS project affect student’s cultural competence? 2. How effective is the TGS project as a context for language learning? 3. How do students compare the TGS with more traditional learning methods? How do teachers evaluate the Turkish textbook? 4. How effective is Internet technology in the TGS project? A number of different instruments were used to measure the effectiveness of global simulation in promoting cultural competence: oral interviews, ACTFL standards textbook evaluations, Flashlight surveys, teacher-course evaluations, and the TGS final exams. The results revealed that the success of global simulation in Turkish has clear implications for teaching not only Turkish, but also other less commonly taught languages, for which the classroom is the predominant method for American university students to learn a foreign language and culture.

Contemporary notions of literacy understand communication as a culturally, historically, and socially situated practice of using and interpreting a variety of linguistic and semiotic resources as they combine within oral and written textual genres to fulfill particular social goals within a given cultural context (Gee, 1998, 2012; Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Kern, 2000; Kramsch, 1993, 1995; New London Group, 1996). These more recent views of literacy have important implications for foreign language (FL) teaching, and call for pedagogies which promote language learning as a socially and culturally situated practice. Despite this, lower level FL teaching in the US continues to feature instructional practices that promote decontextualized, transactional language usage with attention skewed toward oral communication (Byrnes, Maxim, & Norris, 2010; Kern & Schultz, 2005; Schulz, 2006) through materials that locate conversations in students' own contexts rather than in target language discourse contexts (Liddicoat, 2000; Magnan, 2008b). Further, foreign language (FL) departments contain bifurcated curricula where lower-level (LL) courses rooted in instrumental views of language focus on skills of communication, and upper-level (UL) courses primarily center around the study of canonical literature. In 2007 an Ad Hoc Committee of the Modern Language Association (MLA) problematized these divisions, calling upon departments to transform traditional structures toward a more coherent curriculum where language, culture, and discourse are taught holistically (MLA, 2007).This dissertation responds to this call with a curricular design project for intermediate collegiate-level French through a Global Simulation (GS) carried out through a genre-based approach and a Pedagogy of Multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996). For the duration of the course, students adopted character roles through which they enacted contextually- and identity-bound discourse styles within a culturally-grounded fictitious world. Informed by sociocultural theory, this research took a socio-constructivist qualitative approach to analysis of data from learner artifacts, participant written reflections, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaires to explore learners' responses to this fusion of pedagogies from three perspectives: 1) how prior experiences combined with goals and beliefs about language shaped learners' engagement and learning outcomes, 2) how the characters, context, tasks, and textual genres worked in combination to evoke situated language use, and 3) how character-adoption and reflective engagement with LC2 textual meanings invited cross-cultural perspective-taking in the discussion of contemporary social issues. Findings from these three inquiries demonstrate that despite the prevalence of traditional beliefs about language, culture, and FL study, learners are indeed inclined to adapt to new instructional contexts. Further, the combination of pedagogical activities - character, texts, tasks, and critical reflection - can foster second language learners' abilities to recognize culture, context, and identity in communication, and to appropriate language and other symbolic forms selectively for communication of particular meanings across different discourse contexts. These findings point to both the viability and the need to continue ongoing efforts to shape FL curricula and materials in ways which recognize the integral links between language, culture and discourse.

Esse estudo investiga a aprendizagem de vocabulário através da metodologia de Simulação Global (SG), visando mostrar sua utilização como estratégia pedagógica, criativa, interativa, motivadora e eficaz em aula de língua francesa. Tal aprendizagem é vista como um processo social, dinâmico e complexo, envolvendo um grande número de variáveis, dentre as quais as cognitivas e as afetivas desempenham um papel de extrema relevância, e que tem a sala de aula como o cenário social onde professor e alunos constroem conhecimento em conjunto através da negociação. Nesta pesquisa são analisadas as experiências anteriores de aprendizagem de língua estrangeira (língua francesa) dos aprendizes, suas concepções em relação ao ensino de língua estrangeira (LE) e, especialmente, em relação ao vocabulário, a experiência atual de aprendizagem com a SG, bem como a aprendizagem do vocabulário nesse contexto. Na SG, os alunos aprendem em contextos reais de comunicação. As atividades propostas nessa metodologia estimulam a criatividade e a tomada de decisões dos aprendizes e funcionam como mediadores da interação, proporcionando a construção de conhecimento lingüístico-comunicativo e cultural da língua francesa. Vinte e cinco alunos de nível intermediário em língua francesa participaram deste estudo. Os dados foram coletados em um curso de língua francesa, de quarenta e cinco horas, na Universidade Federal de Uberlândia/MG, entre dezembro 2007 e fevereiro de 2008. Os instrumentos utilizados para a pesquisa foram questionários e testes de vocabulário. Observando o processo de ensinoaprendizagem, verificamos que, durante as atividades de SG, os aprendizes construíram seus conhecimentos, conjunta e colaborativamente na língua francesa, interagindo e negociando com seus pares. Feita a análise dos dados, constatamos que a utilização da metodologia SG contribui de maneira significativa para a aprendizagem do vocabulário, pois os alunos memorizam e aprendem mais facilmente as palavras quando estas são (re)utilizadas nas diversas atividades criativas da Simulação Global. Este estudo apresenta, ainda, várias contribuições para a pesquisa em aprendizagem de LE (língua francesa), devido a seu formato inovador e dinâmico, que considera importante a influência dos aspectos cognitivos e sociais na aprendizagem do vocabulário de uma LE. / This study investigates vocabulary learning through the Global Simulating (SG) methodology, aiming at presenting its use as a pedagogical strategy, interaction mediation and creativity motivator in the French class, and its efficiency on vocabulary learning. Vocabulary learning is taken as a social dynamic and complex process involving a wide range of variables, within which cognitive and affective variables play an extremely important role. Such process considers the classroom to be a social environment, where learners and teacher build knowledge through negotiation. We analyze participants prior foreign language learning experiences, their conceptions about foreign language, and especially their conceptions about vocabulary. The latter is related to participants current experience within SG learning context, and we also analyze how experiences and conceptions interfere in the learners actions. The main hypothesis that guides this study is that SG stimulates creativity and learners decision making, which work as interaction mediators, providing French cultural linguistic and communicative knowledge building. Twenty-five intermediate level students of French took part in this research. Questionnaires and vocabulary tests were used for data colleting in a French class at the Federal University of Uberlândia (MG- Brazil), from December 2007 to February 2008, totalizing 45 hours. The data reveal that, during SGs activities, learners build knowledge jointly and collaboratively, interacting and negotiation with peers. The results suggest that SG use brings significant contribution to vocabulary learning as students memorize and acquire lexical items more easily when they are used and re-used in creative activities and simulations. The study brings contribution to the FL teaching and learning field because it is innovative, creative and dynamic, and it considers the influence of cognitive and social aspects in the process of vocabulary learning.

Esse estudo investiga a aprendizagem de vocabulário através da metodologia de Simulação Global (SG), visando mostrar sua utilização como estratégia pedagógica, criativa, interativa, motivadora e eficaz em aula de língua francesa. Tal aprendizagem é vista como um processo social, dinâmico e complexo, envolvendo um grande número de variáveis, dentre as quais as cognitivas e as afetivas desempenham um papel de extrema relevância, e que tem a sala de aula como o cenário social onde professor e alunos constroem conhecimento em conjunto através da negociação. Nesta pesquisa são analisadas as experiências anteriores de aprendizagem de língua estrangeira (língua francesa) dos aprendizes, suas concepções em relação ao ensino de língua estrangeira (LE) e, especialmente, em relação ao vocabulário, a experiência atual de aprendizagem com a SG, bem como a aprendizagem do vocabulário nesse contexto. Na SG, os alunos aprendem em contextos reais de comunicação. As atividades propostas nessa metodologia estimulam a criatividade e a tomada de decisões dos aprendizes e funcionam como mediadores da interação, proporcionando a construção de conhecimento lingüístico-comunicativo e cultural da língua francesa. Vinte e cinco alunos de nível intermediário em língua francesa participaram deste estudo. Os dados foram coletados em um curso de língua francesa, de quarenta e cinco horas, na Universidade Federal de Uberlândia/MG, entre dezembro 2007 e fevereiro de 2008. Os instrumentos utilizados para a pesquisa foram questionários e testes de vocabulário. Observando o processo de ensinoaprendizagem, verificamos que, durante as atividades de SG, os aprendizes construíram seus conhecimentos, conjunta e colaborativamente na língua francesa, interagindo e negociando com seus pares. Feita a análise dos dados, constatamos que a utilização da metodologia SG contribui de maneira significativa para a aprendizagem do vocabulário, pois os alunos memorizam e aprendem mais facilmente as palavras quando estas são (re)utilizadas nas diversas atividades criativas da Simulação Global. Este estudo apresenta, ainda, várias contribuições para a pesquisa em aprendizagem de LE (língua francesa), devido a seu formato inovador e dinâmico, que considera importante a influência dos aspectos cognitivos e sociais na aprendizagem do vocabulário de uma LE. / This study investigates vocabulary learning through the Global Simulating (SG) methodology, aiming at presenting its use as a pedagogical strategy, interaction mediation and creativity motivator in the French class, and its efficiency on vocabulary learning. Vocabulary learning is taken as a social dynamic and complex process involving a wide range of variables, within which cognitive and affective variables play an extremely important role. Such process considers the classroom to be a social environment, where learners and teacher build knowledge through negotiation. We analyze participants prior foreign language learning experiences, their conceptions about foreign language, and especially their conceptions about vocabulary. The latter is related to participants current experience within SG learning context, and we also analyze how experiences and conceptions interfere in the learners actions. The main hypothesis that guides this study is that SG stimulates creativity and learners decision making, which work as interaction mediators, providing French cultural linguistic and communicative knowledge building. Twenty-five intermediate level students of French took part in this research. Questionnaires and vocabulary tests were used for data colleting in a French class at the Federal University of Uberlândia (MG- Brazil), from December 2007 to February 2008, totalizing 45 hours. The data reveal that, during SGs activities, learners build knowledge jointly and collaboratively, interacting and negotiation with peers. The results suggest that SG use brings significant contribution to vocabulary learning as students memorize and acquire lexical items more easily when they are used and re-used in creative activities and simulations. The study brings contribution to the FL teaching and learning field because it is innovative, creative and dynamic, and it considers the influence of cognitive and social aspects in the process of vocabulary learning.