GAMES FOR ENGLISH CLASS

Games for English Classrooms
               


Language learning is a hard task which can sometimes be frustrating. Constant effort is required to understand, produce and manipulate the target language. Well chosen games are invaluable as they give students a break and at the same time allow students to practice language skills. Games are highly motivating since hey are amusing and at the same time challenging. Furthermore, they employ meaningful and useful language in real contexts.
Creative Games for the Language Class
There are many advantages of using games in the classroom:
Games are a welcome break from the usual routine of the language class.
They are motivating and challenging.
Learning a language requires a great deal of effort. Games help students to make and sustain the effort of learning.
Cont. Advantages of Using Games in the Classroom
Games provide language practice in the various skills- speaking, writing, listening and reading.
They encourage students to interact and communicate.
They create a meaningful context for language use.
Some Popular Language Games
Twenty Questions
The Whispering Game
Making a Sentence
Asking Yes/No Questions
Kim’s Game
“Just A Minute”
This game is adapted from a radio game show broadcast over the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). This is how you play the game.
Divide your students into groups. Get each group to give themselves a name.
The objective of each group is to get as many points as possible
The task is to speak on a topic for a minute. The referee ( the teacher) will provide the topics.
Cont.
The competition-members of the other groups-should try to “wrestle” the topic away from the person who is speaking on it. There are three ways to do this:
Hesitation: When a student pauses for too long a break, it is considered a hesitation.
Repetition: When a student keep repeating a particular word or phrase, it is considered repletion.
Deviation: When a student digresses, he can be faulted for deviation.
Cont.
A time keeper will ring the bell once the minute is up. The person who is speaking when the bell rings will win 10 points.
The group with the most points is the winner.
The teacher should determine the topics based upon the students’ level of proficiency. Some examples of the topics are:
Cont.
My Childhood
My Family
My favorite things
Ghosts
My Ideal Partner
Teenagers
A Country I’d Like To Visit
My Favorite Food
If I Had Three Wishes, I’d Like…
“Win, Lose, or Draw”
This game is currently being aired on television in Malaysia. You can play it with as many teams as you like, preferably keeping it to a maximum of four or five teams.
The game is then played as follows :
Divide your class into groups.
Start with the first group. A member of the group should come to the front of the classroom and pick out a piece of paper containing a topic given by members of the other groups. She/He then has to draw the topic on the blackboard once the time keeper gives the “begin” signal.

Cont.
3. Appoint someone to keep time. A student has a maximum of 60 seconds to draw the object; this can vary according to your students’ abilities.
4. The objective is to try to score as few points as possible.
5. The task as for group members to try to guess what the student is drawing in as little time as possible.


Cont.
6. The student doing the drawing cannot talk, make any sound, nor act out the word. Only when his/her group members have guessed the word correctly, can she/he indicate or gesticulate that they have done so.
7. The teacher has to be alert and listen carefully while the student tries to guess what their friend is drawing. Once they have guessed the topic correctly, the teacher stops the action.

Cont.
8. The time keeper announces the time taken and records it on the board.
9. After this; the next group takes its turn. The game can be played for many rounds. Students in each group should take turns drawing.
10. At the end of the game, then scores are tallied. The group with the fewest points is the winner.


Games for Vocabulary Presentation and Revision
Gairns and Redman suggest the following types of vocabulary presentation techniques:
Visual techniques. These pertain to visual memory, which is considered especially helpful with vocabulary retention.
Verbal explanation. This pertains to the use of illustrative situations, synonymy, opposites, scales, definition and categories.
Use of dictionaries
Using Games
♥ W.R. Lee holds that most language games make learners use the language instead of thinking about learning the correct forms. He also says that games should be treated as central not peripheral to the foreign language teaching programme
♥ Richard Amaťo- who believes games to be fun but warns against overlooking their pedagogical value, particularly in foreign language teaching.
Advantages of using games:
Games can lower anxiety, thus making the acquisition of input more likely.
They are highly motivating and entertaining, and they can give shy students more opportunity to express their opinions and feelings
They also enable learners to acquire new experiences within a foreign language which are not always possible during a typical lesson
They add diversion to the regular classroom activities, “break the ice” [but also] they are used to introduced new ideas.

♥ S.M. Silvers says that many teachers are enthusiastic about using games as a “teaching device,” yet they often perceive games as mere time-fillers, “a break from the monotony of drilling” or frivolous activities. He also claim that many teachers often overlook the fact that in a relaxed atmosphere, real learning takes place, and students use the language they have been exposed to and have practiced earlier.
♥ Zdybiewska believes games to be a good way of practicing language, for they provide a model of what learners will use the language for in real life in the future.
Choosing Appropriate Games
Appropriacy - they must correspond to either the students’ level, or age, or to the material that is to be introduced or practiced.
Length and Time – Many games have a time limit, but according to Siek-Pizkozub, the teacher can either allocate more or less time depending on the students’ level, the number of people in a group, or the knowledge of the rules of a game etc.
When to Use Games
♥ Lee – observes a game “should not be regarded as a marginal activity filing in odd moments when the teacher and class have nothing better to do.” Games ought to be at the heart of teaching foreign languages
♥ Rixon suggests that games be used by all stages of the lesson, provided that they are suitable and carefully chosen. At different stages of the lesson, the teacher’s aims connected with a game may vary:
Cont.
Presentation. Provide a good model making meaning clear;
Controlled practice. Elicit good imitation of new language and appropriate responses;
Communicative practice. Give students a chance to use the language.
Use of Games for Presenting and Revising Vocabulary
Vocabulary presentation
♥ Haycraft suggests following certain guidelines. These include teaching the vocabulary “in the words in the form they are written, placing new items in context, and revising them. The presentation of new vocabulary is classified according to verbal and visual techniques following Gairns and Redman’s classification.
Among visual techniques are flashcards, photographs and pictures, wall charts, blackboard drawings, word pictures, incongruous visuals, realia, mime , and gesture.

Verbal techniques consist of using illustrative situations, descriptions, synonyms and antonyms, scales, and as described by Nation , using various forms of definition: definition by demonstration (visual definition), definition by abstraction, contextual definitions, and definition by translation.
♥ Allen and Vallette also suggest the use of categories-organizing words into sets, subclasses and subcategories often aided by visual presentation.
Descriptions of the groups
For the purpose of vocabulary presentation, we chose two groups of third form of students. With one of them we chose a presentation game and with the other translation and context guessing. In both groups, students’ abilities varied- ranging from those whose command of English was very good, able to communicate easily using a wide range of vocabulary and grammatical structures, and those who found it difficult to communicate.
Description of vocabulary picture- puzzle
To prepare the puzzle, we cut two equal-sized pieces of cardboard paper into rectangles. The selected idioms were written on to the rectangles in the puzzle-pieces board and their definitions on the game board, we glued colorful –photographs of landscapes and then cut the puzzle-pieces board into individual pieces, each with an idiom on it The definitions were placed in the same horizontal row opposite to the idioms so that when put together face to face each idiom faced its definition.
Puzzle Pieces Board.
The idioms and their definitions were the following
to be soft in the head: foolish, not very intelligent
to have one’s hair stand on end: to be terrified
to make a face: to make a grimace which may express disgust, anger;
to be two-faced: to agree with a person to his face but disagree with him behind his back ;
to be all eyes: to be very attentive;
Cont
to be an eye-opener: to be a revelation;
to be noisy: to be inquisitive, to ask too many questions;
long ears: an inquisitive person who is always asking too many questions;
to be led by the nose: to be completely dominated by totally influenced by ;
to be all ears: to listen very attentively’
to be wet behind the ears: to be naïve, inexperienced;
Cont.
a loose mouth: an indiscrete person;
one’s lips are sealed: to be obliged to keep a secret;
to have a sweet tooth: to have a liking fo sweet food, sugar, honey, ice cream, etc.;
to grind one’s teeth: to express one’s fury;
to hold one’s tongue: to say nothing, to be discrete;
The task for students
Work out the puzzle by matching the idioms and their definitions. First, put the puzzle-pieces on the desk with the word facing up. Take one and match the idiom to the definition. Having done that, place the puzzle-piece, word-side-up, in the chosen rectangle. When you have used up all the pieces , turn them over. If they form a picture of a landscape, the choices are correct. If not, rearrange the picture and check the idiom-definition correspondences.
The game objectives
To work out the puzzle, students had to match idioms with their definitions. The objective of the game was for each pair to cooperate in completing the activity successfully in order to expand their vocabulary with, in this case, colloquial expressions.
Translation activity
The other group of students had to work out the meanings of the idioms by means of translation. Students translated the idioms into Polish and endeavored to find similar or corresponding expressions in their mother tongue.
Revising Vocabulary
This process aims at helping students acquire active, productive vocabularies.
Techniques for Vocabulary Consolidation
A choice of graphs and grids can be used. Students may give a definition of a given item to be found by other students.
Multiple choice and gap filling exercises will activate the vocabulary while students select the appropriate response
Cont.
Teachers can use lists of synonyms or antonyms to be matched, sentences to be paraphrased, or just some words or expressions in context to be substituted by synonymous expressions.
Doing cloze tests will show students’ understanding of a passage, its organization, and determine the choice of lexical items
Visual aids can be of great help with revision.
Description of the group
A questionnaire is given to teachers to determine their view of using games for vocabulary teaching. In response to the questionnaire, many teachers said they often used games for vocabulary revision. Some claimed they were successful and usually more effective than other methods.
The crossword puzzle
Students worked in pairs. One person in each pair was provided with part A of the crossword puzzle and the other with part B. The students’ task was to fill in their part of the puzzle with the missing words known to their partner. To complete the activity, learners had to ask each other for the explanations, definitions, or examples to arrive at the appropriate answers. Only after getting the answer right could they put it down in the suitable place of their part of the crossword. Having completed the puzzle, students were supposed to find out what word was formed from the letters found in the shaded squares.
ma. teresa d. de guzman