Gamification: an effective way of learning English

     As I mentioned in my last blog post, gamification which has been involved in language teaching and learning becomes to be a popular concept that more and more language instructors and teachers would like to have a try in their language class. It is truth that having games in a language class could be considered as an effective and meaningful way that not only help raise students' interests on learning a language but also actually encourage students to involve themselves in language learning and practice as much as they could.

     This time, I chose and tried an serious game, Third World Framer, which could be recommended by language teachers to their students as a good online game that students could play outside the classroom for autonomous learning.

     I played this game twice, and I would like to say that this game could be considered as a reasonable choice for English learners, especially intermediate English learners. When I played this game, I found that players need to plant some crops and wait for harvest to earn money to support their families and farms. Through this game, English learners would be able to learn a lot of new vocabulary, especially many farm words; for example, corn, wheat, and peanut since this game is a kind of management game which allows players to manage a farm and a family that in a third world. Additionally, this game provides language learners an opportunity to practice their English reading and comprehending abilities as players are required to read some hints and make decisions according to these hints. Moreover, this game also provides a good entry for intermediate English learners to learn something about cross-cultural knowledge because this game lets players to experience some cultural issues by themselves when players are playing this game.

Performance Indicator-ESL.I.5-8.1.1
Students learning English as a second language will use English to acquire, interpret, apply and transmit information for content area learning and personal use. They will develop and use skills and strategies appropriate to their level of English proficiency to collect data, facts, and ideas; discover relationships, concepts, and generalizations; and use knowledge generated from oral, written, and electronically produced texts.

      As the article Kyle Mawer's task type notes, in order to assess if the learning objectives have been met, it is rational to give a small quiz on vocabulary to assess that if students have mastered the new vocabulary and then discuss the game strategy with students, encouraging students to describe their attitudes toward the game, and ask students for their reasons and decision making.Through the small quiz and discussion on various aspects of this game, teachers would be able to indicate that if students have mastered some new words,comprehend the context, and learned something about cross-cultural knowledge.