Gamification: Encouraging learning through play

Gamification is "the application of game elements in non-gaming situations, often to motivate or influence behavior," according to the article 7 Things You Should Know About Gamification.  Learning doesn't have to  be lectures and worksheet after worksheet; learning can and should be fun some of the time. There are many reason that using games in a language classroom can be  beneficial. The TED talk video, Tom Chatfield sums up these benefits in his talk the 7 Ways Games Reward the Brain. "The first one is very simple: experience bars measuring progress...Second, multiple long and short-term aims...Third, you reward effort. It's your 100 percent factor...Fourth, feedback." By giving instant feedback and rewards, you can encourage a students ongoing development.

In a language learning classroom, one game that I could see myself using in an intermediate level ESL classroom is the point and click game Phantasy Quest. I've only played the game once through myself, but I can see how this would be very useful. It requires logical thinking skills as well as language skills. You pick up items, use them as needed, explore the island, put together clues, etc. For this game specifically, the learning objectives would be somewhere along the lines of being able to follow and later describe a logical sequence of events, as well as learning some of the vocabulary that is present in the game (ex. ship wreck). With any sequence of event type activity, the consequences of actions can be looked at as well. In this game, the students are the key participants. The teacher would serve a more passive role in the lesson after explaining the purpose of it. Depending on the number of students and the resources, it can either be an individual or class based game. If I used the walk-through (provided by The Best "Fun" Online Video Games for English Language Development), I would do as the site suggests and pair up students. They would then compete to see who could complete the game first. If possible, I would pull some key images to talk about about the walk-through after each pair completed the game. To assess and see if the objectives were met, I would have the students, on an individual basis, write a general sequence of events of the game in their own words.

For learning to continue outside of the classroom setting, the game Trace Effects. I've played through part of it one time. It's similar to the point and click game talked about above. It requires an (free) account to be created for it to be played. The game is presented as an option to improve your English through play. As it is teaching English through the game, it is also exposing students to a variety of relevant, everyday topics in U.S society. It gives objectives that are to be met before the next step. Similar to what I've mentioned above, the objectives would be learning how to follow a sequence of directions/objectives and vocabulary. The game provides vocabulary practice from the different chapters to reinforce what is in each section as well as links to resources.To assess if learning has occurred, I would look through the vocabulary that the game presents and create an activity to assess their usage. Or I would design an activity like I did above that would have the students use this new vocabulary to lay out the sequence of events.

For both of the above games, sequence of events/logical thinking is very important. It's a skill that can be carried over from the L1, but the new skill is being able to follow directions and describe what happened in an L2. By utilizing this previous knowledge, it can hopefully make the students more comfortable with the concept because they might have been exposed to it.