Conference Agenda

Digital game-based learning (DGBL) has emerged as a promising innovation in language education, offering interactive, immersive, and student-centered alternatives to traditional instruction. DGBL can enhance motivation, cognitive skills, and language proficiency while fostering critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration. Although research on DGBL is growing globally, gaps remain in understanding students’ attitudes toward its use, perceived effectiveness, and self-efficacy, particularly in multilingual higher education contexts (Hung et al., 2018; Kim et al., 2024). Kazakhstan provides a unique setting for investigating these dimensions due to its trilingual education policy (Kazakh, Russian, English) and the strategic importance of English for global communication, trade, and higher education access (Imanova et al., 2025). Furthermore, gender differences in gaming experiences and cultural norms may influence students’ perceptions of DGBL, highlighting the need for context-sensitive investigation (Konstantinov et al., 2024).

This study examines Kazakhstani university students’ motivation, perceived effectiveness, and self-efficacy in using DGBL for English language learning. It further explores how demographic factors (gender, mother tongue, level of study) and behavioral factors (gaming habits, English use) relate to these outcomes. The study is guided by the following questions:

1. How do students perceive DGBL in terms of motivation, perceived effectiveness, and self-efficacy for English learning?

2. Are there differences in these perceptions based on demographics such as gender, mother tongue, or level of study?

3. How do prior experiences with formal English education and engagement with digital games influence motivation, perceived effectiveness, and self-efficacy?

4. Does frequency of English use and gameplay correlate with students’ attitudes toward DGBL?

5. How are students’ beliefs about English language improvement through games associated with their motivation, perceived effectiveness, and self-efficacy?

This study is guided by Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985), which conceptualizes motivation along intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions, and emphasizes autonomy, competence, and relatedness—key factors in DGBL engagement. Sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978) complements this framework by highlighting collaborative learning and the social construction of knowledge within immersive game environments. Together, these frameworks allow for analysis of both the psychological and social dimensions of student-centered digital learning, while situating learning within a multilingual, culturally specific context.

Although situated in Kazakhstan, this study addresses broader European and international concerns: the integration of digital technologies in higher education, the equity and inclusivity of digital learning tools, and the role of student motivation and self-efficacy in effective language acquisition. Findings can inform DGBL strategies across multilingual and multicultural settings, offering evidence-based guidance for educators, policymakers, and game designers seeking to implement digital learning innovations in higher education globally.

By examining how students perceive, engage with, and are affected by digital game-based learning, this study explores the changing conditions and potentials of educational knowledge production in the digital era. It addresses the societal and educational implications of technology-mediated learning, the role of student-centered knowledge, and how academic research can inform policy and practice—directly reflecting ECER’s theme, “Knowing and Acting: The changing conditions and potentials of education research.”

L2 writing is one of the most demanding activities learners engage in, drawing on their linguistic resources (Hyland, 2003), and learners are required to establish control over these resources to construct a sophisticated and coherent written discourse. As Housen and Kuiken (2009) indicated, proficiency in writing is grounded in complexity, accuracy and fluency, the CAF framework, but complexity has been given greater importance, as it is regarded as the metric for learners’ development of linguistic resources and their responsiveness to particular communicative needs (Bulté & Housen, 2012).

Linguistic complexity is a multidimensional construct comprising lexical, syntactic, morphological, and discourse-level components. Given their theoretical relevance and methodological soundness, lexical and syntactic complexity have been more salient in the literature as these have more standardised analytical frameworks and are more informative in languages with limited morphology. Lexical complexity comprises three dimensions, lexical diversity, lexical density, and lexical sophistication, which encompass different aspects of lexical use (Bulté & Housen, 2012). Syntactic complexity, being a multidimensional construct, comprises the variety, sophistication, and range of the grammatical structures in a text (Lu, 2010).

These dimensions of linguistic complexity have also become salient in discussions of Generative AI texts, as they are applicable to AI-generated texts. Hence, the emergence of Generative AI has introduced a new point of comparison for L2 writing performance since its incorporation into L2 writing classrooms has become more prominent. Generative AI models can generate written texts that demonstrate considerable grammaticality, lexical sophistication, etc., attributes that are mostly linked to higher proficiency in academic writing. Several studies (Chen, 2025; Fredrick & Craven, 2025; Sun & Li, 2025; Mizumoto, 2024; Zindela, 2023) compared L2 students’ and AI-generated texts in their studies, the findings of which disclosed that AI-generated texts exhibit higher lexical diversity but similar syntactic complexity, with more formulaic structures and different rhetoric and agency. There is a growing body of literature that has compared AI-generated and student-authored written texts, yet the comparisons have primarily focused on accuracy, and thus overall performance or concentrated only on specific dimensions of linguistic complexity, such as only lexical diversity, etc. Therefore, a comparison between human-authored L2 writing and AI-generated texts, from a multidimensional perspective, on both syntactic and lexical complexity remains underresearched in the field of L2 writing.

Thus, the present study investigates differences in syntactic and lexical complexity between AI-generated and human-authored opinion essays and whether these syntactic and lexical indices can be utilised to model the patterns of similarity and difference between the two. The following research question will be addressed in this study:

1. Are there statistically significant lexical and syntactic complexity indices between human-authored and AI-generated opinion essays?

   1. If yes, can these indices be used to model the lexical and syntactic complexity patterns of human-authored and AI-generated opinion essays?

Adopting a quantitative, corpus-based approach, two corpora consisting of 223 human-authored and 223 AI-generated opinion essays will be compared using 25 lexical complexity indices and 14 syntactic complexity indices proposed by Lu (2012). Accordingly, the present study is anticipated to provide theoretical, pedagogical, and policy-level implications for researchers in the field, teachers, and policymakers in AI literacy and education. At the theoretical level, it is expected to expand L2 writing and the CAF research by utilizing AI-generated texts as a comparative reference point. At the pedagogical and policy levels, the findings are expected to inform the shift from product-oriented evaluation to process-oriented instruction, where instructors are given a way to infer the learners’ use of writing supports and could implement support systems accordingly, that foregrounds rhetorical awareness, authorial voice, and idea construction, in line with UNESCO's (2024) AI competency framework for students.

Learner agency is a concept central to higher education (Klemenčič, 2023) and foreign language (FL) education (Mercer, 2011). For learners to play an agentic role in their personal goal pursuit, self-efficacy beliefs, or “individuals’ judgments of their capabilities to learn or perform courses of action at designated levels” (Schunk & Pajares, 2010, p.668), contribute to their personal agency through engaging in self-regulated processes, including goal setting, self-monitoring progress, self-evaluations, and effective use of strategies (Zimmerman, 2000, p.87).
While these beliefs have been shown to partly influence learning, task performance, and motivation across domains in education (Schunk & DiBenedetto, 2015), they cannot be understood in isolation. Recent FL motivation research has re-emphasized the role of contextual aspects of learning experiences in which self-efficacy mainly stems from successful engagement in activities that are personally valued, challenging, and authentic (Graham, 2022). The extent to which learners perceive value in activities is related the likelihood for them to initiate self-regulation (Usher & Schunk, 2017, p. 28). On the other hand, motivation researchers in the context of learning languages other than English (LOTEs) have suggested a strong positive relationship between learners’ personalized reasons for FL study, and higher levels of FL proficiency (Dörnyei & Al-Hoorie, 2017, p.465). Understanding self-efficacy from the perspective of FL learners’ personally meaningful reasons may shed light on the worrying decline of interest and investment in LOTE degree programmes, in both the Netherlands and internationally (NRC, 2024; Lusin et al., 2023).
Given the roles of self-efficacy and task value in FL learners’ personal goal pursuits, the paper examines the retrospective narratives of three graduates from a Chinese as a FL (CFL) degree program at a Dutch University. Narrative data not only provide rich contexts from learners’ perspectives but also allow us to examine the qualitative elements in the dynamic processes of learners’ self-evaluations of their FL competence, which may shift as they encounter new situations. Our analysis focused on the key experiences in which self-efficacy, self-regulation, and personal meaning emerged. Our findings implied that authenticity emerged as a central contextual dimension in participants’ key experiences and their most valued goal: speaking fluency. On the one hand, authentic information inferred from such key experiences appeared to prompt participants for meaningful self-evaluations of their speaking self-efficacy. When feedback inferred from these experiences was not perceived as authentic, undesirable emotions related to a sense of awkwardness emerged in their narratives. On the other hand, participants’ interpretations of task value appeared to depend on the level of perceived authenticity in social interactions using Chinese as a tool for communication. It seems that some personally valued experiences were interpreted as more worthwhile because participants attributed their usefulness in relation to their personal goal. By examining the qualitative aspects of self-efficacy and task value, the paper aims to contribute to discussion and inform future FL pedagogical approaches in fostering learner agency.