The ambivalence of electronic games to character and English performance

Abstract

The popularity of electronic games, commonly called video games, has now emerged in all ages of the population, mostly children and the youth. Becoming wellliked electronic games among students, parents and educators fear that the time consumed for the games exceed that of learning. Nevertheless, it is unavoidable for students to play games in their leisure time. Furthermore, some researchers found negative and positive impacts of electronic games. The purpose of this study enlightens the ambivalence of the impact of playing electronic games to university students’ character and their English performance. The participants were 148 university students filling in the self-evaluated questionnaires to appraise whether the electronic games contribute negatively or positively to their character and English performance. The first category from the negative impact indicates that electronic games manipulate their character with no socializing and bad-tempered, while the positive side deals with fast decision making, enjoying life, and socializing with others. The second category from the negative side involves the harsh and vulgar words, while from the positive side shows the improvement of the freshman’s English performance through English electronic games, i.e. the vocabulary, listening, reading and speaking skills. It can be concluded that electronic games do not only impart negative effects but also provide the positive impacts. It concludes that freshman should manage their time between gaming and studying.