What is your general impression of the game?
How much language use is involved? What skills are addressed?
How could you use this game to learn the language on your own?
What kind of classroom tasks could be built around the game?
Actually, I am not a game fan since my parents do not like for me to play games. My parents always think that playing games is nothing but just a waste of my time. It is true that I have never learned English, the only foreign language I know, via games. I feel sorry that I do not have this kind of fun learning experience when learning English. For most English learners from Taiwan, they seldom learn English intrinsically because English is a required course from junior high to first year in college. Now, the English learning is even earlier, students have to learn English from elementary school. Maybe learning English is more fun since there are a lot of native English speaking teachers at schools in Taiwan compared with the time I learned English. Also, the learning materials are more visual and vivid to attract students’ attention or motivate students’ learning.
Although I do not have game-oriented learning experience, I would like to share the “repetition” learning strategy that Piirainen-Marsh and Tainio bring. There are four types of repetition: repetition and imitation in next turn, anticipatory use, recontextualisation, and expansion. I use the “repetition” in learning English via “movies” or “television shows” instead of games. For the first type of repetition, I first repeated what the actor or actress said by imitating and reproducing the language. During the repetition, I mainly focus on the idiomatic expressions, voices, intonations, and accents, and try to catch up with their speech speed. For the second type of repetition, it is true that if I have watched the movie or TV shows more than one time, I could anticipate what is coming next. It is possible for me to speak out the lines with the actors or actress simultaneously. As for the third type of repetition, it is not hard to find out that similar movie stories might have the similar conversations. This is good training to express the things in different ways. This final type of repetition is the most difficult one for me. It seems that I could use what I learned from the movies or TV shows in my “real” life, and “expand” its usages. Sometimes, it is funny when I use the movies or TV’s conversations with my friends because I might recite the line from the movies or TV. Overall, I have benefited from the repetition strategy when learning English.
Interesting, so do you think that repetition has a place in language teaching? Should we make students repeat drills? Or do you think the motivation you felt, the fact that you did this sort of repetition because you wanted to (not because you were forced to), made it effective for you?
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