Gamification is often proposed as a promising solution to traditional e-learning systems by the incorporation of game elements and mechanisms to enhance the motivation, engagement and students’ learning. However, most current studies lack careful and thorough experimental evaluation on the effect of gamification and are normally applied to science learning for adults which makes it difficult to generalize the findings to other learning domains. This paper addresses this issue by offering a controlled experiment with 58 elementary school students studying a course on Arabic language to investigate the learning effect of gamification. The results indicate that gamification positively enhances the learning outcome and students’ learning motivation.