In general people think that studying is boring and, in fact, it should not be. The great challenge is to make a class a fun experience to make motivation flourish, pleasant to engage students, and enjoyable to favour the emotional response in learning and thus develop memory. For more information, read The Challenge.
In this recipe there are no exact ingredients but there are some that cannot be missing: dynamics, diversity, movement, entertainment and a dash, at least, of culture to achieve a most serious objective: learning English.
There are hundreds of games we know and can be adapted to teach.
It is definitely not the same to practise numbers by repeating them in order or writing them dozens of times than by playing Yatzee. There are people who think playing is a waste of time. But what do we do when we play Yatzee? We USE numbers and thus we learn them.
Games make us use the target language for a purpose different from practice itself. They catch our attention so naturally that students make a bigger effort to concentrate and memorize because they want to win. Is this bad? Dr Gwen Bailey Moore says “Winning produces a feeling of success. Success and winning in games can be transferred to getting an A, B, or C in the next test in school. For example, a child´s thought pattern might be as follows: Paying attention helps me to win. Winning makes me feel good about myself. I am not so bad. Better grades make me feel good about myself. Paying attention can help me achieve better grades and have better feelings about myself.” Not bad at all! Games provide marvelous ways for students to improve their ability to attend. “Strategies, to be developed through the thought processes and manual manipulation of games, are the framework on which attention spans expand.”
To be continued…
6 comments:
I could not agree with you more. My experience with learning languages (and most anything else) is that if it is not fun, or at least moderately interesting, it is not sustainable. The likelihood of quitting or simply not learning at a reasonable rate is then considerably higher. I think kids even more than adults would agree with the idea that you have to keep the "lessons" fun and interesting. Paul
To be honest, I only work with adults now and they want fun too! Some students just have to learn even if they don´t like it and they are so frustrated by the time they start that, if you don´t do something to help them relax (another good reason for using games) and enjoy classes, they are likely to quit.
I loved the article. I don't know how to play Yatzee but I will use it to learn numbers in Kiswahili. I will let you know how it goes. I love your ingredients and it is true dynamics, diversity, entertainment etc. Great observations. I think that your techniques can be used to learn anything. Great post ! Keep up the good work :-)
Thank you so much for your kind words. As for Yatzee, you can find the rules on the web but there´s a simpler game (very similar and shorter) called Generala, which appears in the book Al Rescate del Estudiante de Español. I agree with you on the fact that you can use games to teach anything. I taught my "artistic" niece the table of 7 by playing a memory game and the table of 8 by playing cards.
Ok, I am going to make some cards and use them from Swahili. I will play with my grandson. I will let you know how it goes.
Great, Darleana. Let me know how it goes. = )
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