I know I sound like a broken record having a little pity-party… but maybe that is an accurate reflection of my feelings. Scouring the internet for games yields so many amazing results… for everything EXCEPT foreign language! There are so many wonderful and well-thought out games for history, government, math, science, English… and even ESL! Conspicuously missing, though, are games of the same caliber for language learning. Despite my search (and believe me I have looked) I have yet to find any comprehensive well-developed games that do more than test student’s memorization of verb conjugations or user-inputted vocabulary (Duolingo being the major exception).
My frustrations aside, games are an absolute necessity in any educational environment. So much of language learning is inauthentic and rule-based, games provide students with the essential opportunities to put all of those rules aside and just use the language they’ve learned! Games give students some healthy and friendly competition, infusing a little fun into almost any type of activity. They can provide a more authentic atmosphere for practice of language skills and can put grammar rules and memorized vocabulary into context for the students, giving the material students have learned an important added value.
My frustrations aside, games are an absolute necessity in any educational environment. So much of language learning is inauthentic and rule-based, games provide students with the essential opportunities to put all of those rules aside and just use the language they’ve learned! Games give students some healthy and friendly competition, infusing a little fun into almost any type of activity. They can provide a more authentic atmosphere for practice of language skills and can put grammar rules and memorized vocabulary into context for the students, giving the material students have learned an important added value.