Serious Games as language learning

   According to Wikipedia, serious games are simulations of real-world events or processes designed for the purpose of solving a problem. Although serious games can be entertaining, their main purpose is to train or educate users, though it may have other purposes, such as marketing or advertisement. Serious game will sometimes deliberately sacrifice fun and entertainment in order to achieve a desired progress by the player. Serious games are not a game genre but a category of games with different purposes. Serious games are primarily focused on an audience outside of primary or secondary education. The game that I chose is ‘The Garbage Dreams Game’ which goes inside the world of Egypt’s Zaballeen(“garbage people”). This game invites players to take on the role of the Zaballeen, who impressively recycle 80% of the trash they collect. At beginning it starts with one neighborhood, one factory, and one hungry goat. Game users have 8 months to build their recycling empire and get Cairo’s total recycling as high as they can. The users have to put any garbage they can recycle into the correct processor by clicking and dragging. Send the rest to the landfill within limited time.

   I played three times to make the cities in Egypt clean by sorting the recycling items! Also I have learned a lot such as we cannot put coffee paper cups in paper recycling. I think this game is very educational as well as authentic and I would definitely choose it as a learning tool out of the classroom. This is because the game would allow students not only to get new information but also be exposed to different people in the world and the many different ways that they live. Moreover, considering language learning, they may have many chances to be exposed to the vocabulary or phrases related to recycling while doing the game. One more interesting thing is that, although it is not focused on language learning, students might have a chance to study management because they have to manage money that they earn from recycling and time to conduct the game more successfully. 
 In my lesson, I will introduce today's topic(recycling) to students and hand out KWLS chart in pairs so that each pair can writes down what they already know, what they want to know before conducting the activity with the serious game. And then I will provide some news or articles related to the topic before students play the game. This will lead students to think about the topic but, I won't take time too much for this reading part because they might get bored. After talking about what they have read, I will group them in pairs to participate in the game. Finally, students will have time to write the rest of KWLS chart and two pairs will be a group to share their ideas. 
 To assess what they learned, I will use two task types which are problem solving and telling a story. After sharing their ideas with the chart, each group would be asked to have a presentation to summarize their ideas and this can be a way to assess their understanding by listening to their oral production. Or, teachers can ask students to write their thought about recycling and then collect their writing to assess.

※Game: The Garbage Dreams Game

※Performance Indicator - ESL.I.5-8.1.1.16:
Students apply learning strategies to acquire information and make texts comprehensible and meaningful.