A Game in ESL Class

     I would like to introduce a game as a tool of ESL class. Pollekes Blue Room Escape is a click type room escape game created by Ruud for EscapeGames24. In this game, I was locked in a blue room and tried to escape the blue room by finding and using items. There were three spaces such as a living room with a sink, a front entrance and a computer room and I had to solve puzzles to escape. While playing the game, the game provided some instructions or hints. I played twice because the first time, it took long time and actually, I could not complete the task. So, I checked the walkthroughs before doing it the second time. 

  If I use this game in the class, I will teach some vocabulary provided by the game like a balloon, a fishnet, and so on and definitely it will be a good way for a speaking group work(three or four members).  Through this game, students would be able to be exposed to various vocabulary and some instructions from the game. Before starting the game, I will set the context to warm up the activity and introduce some vocabulary they might not be familiar. Also, I will provide a sheet of walkthroughs with a couple of sentences for the beginning part and have students complete their own walkthroughs with their members. This will allow students to practice speaking and writing to solve the task. During the game, I will walk around and monitor their performance to check their understanding and how they are doing the task. To motivate their participation more spontaneously, I will provide some rewards to the winner who escapes the room the first or I will limit the time to escape the room. After they finish the game, I will give the walkthroughs to compare their own walkthroughs and collect their walkthroughs to assess their performance. Also I can use walkthroughs as an assessment like filling in the blanks to check their learning.

Performance Indicator - ESL.E.2-4.4.1.8:
Students negotiate and manage interactions to accomplish social and classroom tasks.

Try this game! -> Polleke's Blue Room

Try a game as a language learning activity!

   I believe that using games a great activity for students to learn a second language because it is easy to motivate student to get involved in the activity and, finally, they encounter the lesson which a teacher would like to teach.

For example, Phantasy Quest1 was interesting! Although I complete the tasks a little, I was able to see various vocabulary with having fun! Phantasy Quest 1 is a point and click type adventure game, where you awaken to find yourself alone on a beach. Nearby is the wreck of your ship. All I need to do is that using the mouse and clicking anywhere on the game screen. Some things I can activate simply by clicking on them, while others I may have to use an item that you have collected in your inventory. From this game, teachers might pick and teach some vocabulary or make students the sentences popped up and check the walkthroughs. To complete each tasks, students have to read the sentences so I believe that this is a good way for students to be exposed to new words or sentences. Also, by making this game as a pair work, they can negotiate and talk about the tasks which would lead them to practice the speaking skill.

    Also, the name of another game I played is ‘Juiceand Fruit’ and I played the game three times. At the beginning I could not connect to language learning, however, as time goes by, I recognize the vocabulary related to a serving beverage store. So this game is to show the skills as a juice maker and serve the beverages requested by customers within a limited time. If a user achieves the specific score, the number of customer is raised. I can choose some vocabulary related to such as a type of glass, fruit flavor, various straws, strip pattern, and so on. For the teacher’s role, we can guide or give more specific instructions when teachers encounter students who are in stuck by monitoring their performance. Above all, this game is very simple and addictive so I think that students probably enjoy this game to win the higher score. And before starting this game, I can encourage students to play this game with the competition. So the student who gets the highest score will get the juice as a reward. I will definitely use a walk through for the game because it can be helpful for students to learn the game. With a walk through, I can make them guess the walk through first and then provide the answers. Also, the images from the games are very helpful and simple for students to remember the vocabulary. To assess students, I can make some pop quiz of vocabulary like filling in the blanks to check their understanding or make them engage in a cooperative activity as a writing activity to create the instructions how to play the game. One more thing as an assessment, I can provide the images of each vocabulary and play the role as a customer to make the student pick the right image from my beverage requests. 

Performance Indicator - ESL.E. PK-1.4.1.8:
Students negotiate and manage interactions to accomplish social and classroom tasks.

Game Link: Juiceand Fruit

Do you know Gamification?

Gamification is the use of game thinking and game mechanics in non-game contexts to engage users in solving problems and increase users' self contributions.

Gamification has been studied and applied in several domains, with some of the main purposes being to engage, teach in classrooms, entertain, measure, and to improve the perceived ease of use of information systems. A review of research on gamification shows that a majority of studies on gamification find positive effects from gamification. Gamification inspires students to develop competencies and skills as they focus on the activities of the game. And the game mechanics encourage students to compete against themselves, looking to reach a personal best or to satisfy their own learning goals. By participating in these types of activities, students acquire information and hone abilities while achieving interim goals that provide a clear sense of progress, rather than simply focusing on completing the course. Game mechanics reinforce the fact that failure indicates that more work is needed to master the skill or knowledge at hand.

According to Tom Chatfield, In terms of education, perhaps most obviously of all, we can transform how we engage people. We can offer people the grand continuity of experience and personal investment. We can break things down into highly calibrated small tasks. We can use calculated randomness. We can reward effort consistently as everything fields together. And we can use the kind of group behaviorsthat we see evolving when people are at play together, these really quite unprecedentedly complexcooperative mechanisms. He provides a video game called EverQuest(Killing dragons) as an example to support the importance of Gamification. This is a player-developed,self-enforcing, voluntary currency, and it's incredibly sophisticated player behavior. Also he emphasized that ‘engagement’ can be transformed by the psychological and the neurological lessons we can learn from watching people that are playing games. But it's also about collective engagement and about the unprecedented laboratory for observing what makes people tick and work and play and engage on a grand scale in games.

To use games in an L2 class, we need to consider 3 elements: commercial and educational games, to play or to design, and integration. Classroom activities using commercial games might include analysis of the game play experience targeting specific vocabulary, language functions, or cultural themes. For example, learners could be directed to keep a game journal in which they are asked to record relevant information such as characters, setting, language, and/ or reflect on their in-game choices. This experience then serves as background knowledge for other classroom activities such as speaking tasks or writing assignments. By creating goals, narratives, and content, learners must engage in the language at a level beyond that of playing the game Integration can include, for example, the use of game content as pre-writing content for a writing task or as an impetus for a classroom debate. In addition, a design task might take the place of a more traditional writing task, following the same multi-draft process to teaching writing skills and strategies.

※ References:

7 Things You Should Know About Games andLearning

Tom Chatfield: 7 Ways Games Reward theBrain

"Just Playing Games? A Look at the Useof Digital Games for Language Learning"