O n f e r e n c e

computer game 
Stop disasters!
in ESP English 
course at University level could be regarded as innovative because papers considering 
the educational potential of computer/video games usually deal with a different age 
group and game types. Taking into account the genuine interest in computer games on 
the part of modern students, which was proved by surveying 110 of 1 
–
6 year students 
from different departments of SPbSPU, we decided to risk using the simulation strategy 
computer game 
Stop disasters!
as a vehicle for vocabulary building and consolidation in 
the fifth year Complex Safety students. We tried two ways of selecting and introducing 
the specialized low frequency lexis important for success in this game. The first way, 
which included using tools from VocabProfile section of T. Cobb website 
(http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/) for the analysis of the vocabulary used in the game, we 
described in our WorldCALL-2013 paper (Kogan & Popova, 2013). 
In the second way we involved students in selecting the unknown vocabulary and relied 
on their reports when developing exercises with the words unfamiliar for students. The 
students had to play the game at home choosing the Russian language in gameplay 
settings. During the term the students had to play the game two or three times fighting 
different disasters and paying attention to the unknown vocabulary before they had a 
chance to play the game in the computer class at the end of the term. Each time they 
were required to prove fact of game playing at home with automatically generated 
Mission repo
rt. They then submitted the list of words and/or expressions they couldn’t 
translate into English. The unfamiliar words were introduced through specially designed 
matching, gap filling and multiple choice exercises during a 10 minute warm-up activities 
at 10 lessons of the term. The enhancement of their linguistic competence was evident in 
the results of the final term test, including all the core vocabulary of the game in the 
versions of fire, flood and hurricane disasters. We shared our experience in introducing 
the computer games into ESP masters’ course for technical students with Linguistics 

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-206- 
2014 CALL Conference 
LINGUAPOLIS
www.antwerpcall.be 
students from our Department, specializing in SLT, asking their opinion, which way of 
introducing the unknown game vocabulary was better. This provoked very lively debates 
among the linguists as well. A lot of tasks for comparison can be developed using the 
search 
features 
of 
on-line