Use of Games for ESL, Pros and Cons

[Abel Barrett]

As part of the COTE certification program, I ,among others,have been assigned the writing of an essay relating to the advantages and disadvantages of using games as a technique for teaching ESL. In Mexico, where I teach, there is lack of materials relating to ESL teaching and those in my school's library discuss only the games themselves but not the justification or value of their use and there is no material objecting to the use of games. Can anyone direct me to discussions or materials on the net which cite or expound on advantages and disadvantages of the use of games in ESL? Thank you!

[LarryLatham]

I'm afraid I'm not aware of any discussions about the educational value of games, Abel, but I imagine there are some. You might try google.com as a search engine.

What's especially interesting to me in your post is your revelation that your local library carries a selection of games for ESL use, but no justification for them. This commonly seems to be the case. I guess the value of games in the classroom is simply taken for granted by most ESL teachers and administrators. Perhaps this is particularly true of teachers of children. I believe that those of us who are involved in these educational efforts must have a better indication of whether our use of time in the classroom is advancing our students' language development is proceeding effeciently.

My own work is with adults, and I must report that many, if not most of my colleagues in this area are also enamored of games in the classroom. Sometimes they are called "activities", perhaps in an effort to make them sound better. I, myself, have a certain suspicion of the value of games, except as a means of allowing students to 'take a breather' after a particularly taxing concentration on, say, a rather vexing point of grammar study. Although I have no particular knowledge that games are not useful, I find myself feeling uncomfortable whenever someone suggests that playing games allows students to "practice their English." That just doesn't completely wash with my observations of the students as they're playing. And whatever 'practice' they get from it doesn't seem to stick.

Are there any others of you out there who feel less than comfortable about the use of games as an educational medium?

Larry Latham

[Abel Barrett]

To: Larry Latham
Thank you for quick reply. My opinion at this point is similar to yours. I can see the justification of use of games (on the assumption that they are meaningful)for teaching children and adolescents as a way of obtaining and maintaining attention at certain points in the process, because play (as distinguished from a structured games)is a social function that children use to learn just about everything that they do learn. If I do come up with more info I'll post it for all to see, hoping it wil contribute to their efforts. Thanks again!

[scribble]

I've been teaching ESL for nearly a decade, and most teachers I know are very PRO games and activities. However, I know a few who are completely against them. ("I HATE GAMES!" I remember one colleague shouting.)

Penny Ur, in her classic A Course in Language Teaching, prefers the word activities over games, because the word games connotes "fun" and "competition", whereas there is quite a wide range of activities in ESL resource books. Some can be very serious and thought-provoking. If you consult the numerous Oxford, Cambridge, and Pilgrims resource books for teachers, you will see everything from silly mime activities, to activities for organizing group discussions, to reading activities that get students to talk about racism. (And if you have never looked at any of these resource books, you are missing a lot!!!!)

Here's my brief list of pros and cons for using games (since the term activities is rather broad, I'm limiting myself to the "fun" stuff)

PROS
games...
Can be used to get students to practice grammar, vocabulary, etc.
Can lift spirits
Can bring variety into the lesson (different patterns of interaction, different intelligences, different moods, etc.)
Can be used to get students to interact in groups (producing more language than just answering the teacher's questions one by one)
Can be a way of pleasing students who want games



CONS
games...
Can be just a way of killing time
Can be one teachers' way of covering his own lack of experience
Can be unproductive in terms of getting students to practice the language
Can irritate students who don't want to be "treated like children"


My own opinion: I think games and activities are very conducive to language learning when used wisely. I don't recommend randomly choosing a few games and activities just to fill up the hours, but I think a few well chosen activities can make a lesson more appealing for the students. I teach students in their late teens/early 20's at a university in Asia, and I personally find that using activities in the classroom have the following advantages: 1) Students participate more in language learning activities than when we just use the coursebook. 2) Students seem more pleased with classes when we do some activities along with the coursebook. 3) I have fewer behavior problems when I give them some activities that are not right out of the book.

[Abel Barrett]

To: Scribble
Penny Ur has been mentioned to me, but I've not had access to her book, which I'm sure would be enlightening. Your experience indicates that the use of games for teaching ESL should be judicious and that it should not be thought that games will convey all of the information that a teacher wiches to convey to learners. Whether something is an "activity" or a "game" depends on definitions and could end up in some "hairsplitting", the important thing is will the activity or game result in learners gleaning enough to produce satisfactory communication. Thank you!

[LarryLatham]

Hello Scribble, and Hi again, Abel,

I too have not seen Ur's A Course in Language Teaching, but I've been using 'activities' from her book Discussions That Work for more than ten years. Many of them are excellent for getting students to talk to each other. You see, I can agree with you that certain carefully chosen activities or procedures can be useful in the classroom to help students work with their developing knowledge of English. What bothers me, though, is that this notion is so quickly and irrationally expanded to mean that games (or activities or whatever they may be called) are good for students...period. It is the casual use of games in classrooms, which seem to me to be so prevalent, that gives me pause. Just witness the countless times that even teachers who post messages here in these forums ask if 'anybody knows any fun games or activities.' It's as if the object in the classroom is for the students to have fun. Now, lest you all think me an old curmudgeon, a stern taskmaster who lectures to his students continuously, permitting no levity, an unrelenting Scrooge, I hasten to try to correct this view. I like fun in the classroom too. Nothing I like better than laughter and smiles from my students, and I try to encourage plenty of that. Students often tell me privately about how much they enjoy their time in class. But I also am serious about my purpose there as well as aware that my students are depending on me, in most cases at least, to genuinely help them develop their skills in English as efficiently as I can. I believe, on the basis of my experiences in class, that learning a new language can and should be fun...in and of itself, if it is approached in ways that students can grasp and in a teacher-guided atmosphere that rewards personal thought and risk-taking. Lots of mistakes are made in such a classroom, and lots of funny things get said. So we all have a good laugh, and learn from the funny stuff because it can often be quite revealing about the language. That's a long ways from games of a contrived nature. Note, however, that I do allow that the use of certain "games" carefully chosen for specific purposes can be valuable.

Am I making sense here? I hope you can see my point, and if you feel you can take issue with these ideas, I'd love to hear your arguements. I suspect that your ideas are not too far from mine, but maybe you've thought about this in ways that haven't yet occurred to me.

Larry Latham

[Celeste]

I am glad that I took the time to read everything said in this thread before posting. In my teaching career, I have taught at a high school in Korea, a private ESL school in Canada, Elemetary schools in Japan, and held teacher traing seminars in both Korea and Japan. I strongly belive in the use of games (sometimes activities, but sometimes actual games with points, etc.) as a means of practicing grammatical structures, utilising vocabulary in specific lexical areas without resorting to boring book dialogues, listening and pronunciation practice, and as a way to review material in a classroom situation where a test is not going to be given.

There are a few occasions where I would just use a game for the sake of fun-for example, if the whole class made a significant improvement on the real test as compared to the pre-test. Most of the time, I like to structure my classes with at least one game or comunicative activity after I have taught the main lesson point. After that I would do a quick oral quiz/ review of the material practiced, correct any errorsclarify or re-teach the main lesson point if necessary , and then at the end of the class give the homework assignment. (In elementary schools, I don't give them homework at the end of the class. Instead, we sing a song.)

For me the best activity books/ games books are ones with a really good index, so that as I am planning my lessons I can quickly find an activity that practices the language to be learned in the lesson. Sometimes I can't find anything in the books I have so I use the internet. If I still can't find anything, then I end up having to make my own activity. I HATE DOING THAT. I always feel as if I didn't research properly if I have to make up my own activity. Whenever I do make up my own materials, I do save them for future use(if they worked well- my spectacular failures get round filed).

My favourite activity/games books are:

Keep talking By Friederike Klippel

Elementary Communication Games
Intermediate Communication Games
Advanced Communication Games By Jill Hadfield

Discussions that Work
Grammar Practice Activities By Penny Ur

Five Minute Activities By Penny Ur and Andrew Wright

Fun With Grammar by Suzanne W. Woodward

Pronunciation Games by Mark Hancock

[Abel Barrett]

To: Larry Latham, scribble & Celeste
I'm grateful for Celeste's contribution to my quest for opinions relating to the subject. Her experience with Asian learners is remote from my own with adults who (1) have some notion of English, (2) are geographically close to an English speaking country, (3) who have some English language expressions,and(4) whose mother tongue has a similar written code, i.e. it is less of a chore,in my, case to obtain and maintain attention.
In referring to Larry's recapitulation of the discussion so far, the initial ideas remain in that there is no objection to the use of games as such, but there are words of caution to be exercised in the choice of games and the reasons for and frequency of use. Scribble, may I quote or paraphrase your Pros and Cons summary? Thank you!

[sita]

Thanks for an interesting discussion guys!

Siân

[scribble]

Yes, you are certainly welcome to quote anything I have written here.

I basically agree with Larry's position that language teaching should be more than just games. However, I can't say that I agree with everything that he has said here. First of all, I don't assume that my colleagues who use games, as well as those who post here looking for "fun games and activities" believe that games are good "period" or use games casually. I believe that most teachers I know are doing their best to teach language in their own way. I certainly don't think there is ONE way to teach correctly, and even though I occasionally bristle at some other teacher's idea of how to teach, I speculate that maybe he or she is on to something that I'm not, and his or her students are benefitting in ways that I'm not even aware of. Most teachers I have met know at least as much as I do about language teaching (often more), and I try to have faith that they are doing a good job, even if they use more (or fewer) games than I usually do.

If you look back at some of the other pieces of this discussion, you will see expressions such as "well chosen" (my words) and "carefully chosen" (Larry's).

What exactly is a well chosen activity????

I don't think we can come up with a definition everyone can agree on. Someone might choose something based on a grammar point, someone else might look for something that gets the students talking about something personal, another might want to find an activity to help the students review what they learned last week. And someone else might want to find out something unrelated (AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT) just to keep bored students from complaining. The Penny Ur book I mentioned earlier has some excellent guidelines for deciding what constitutes an effective teaching activity (see Chapter 1), but as well written as it is, I'm not sure she's covered everything there is to the subject.

[Pink Piggy]

Larry Lantham said:

Although I have no particular knowledge that games are not useful, I find myself feeling uncomfortable whenever someone suggests that playing games allows students to "practice their English." That just doesn't completely wash with my observations of the students as they're playing. And whatever 'practice' they get from it doesn't seem to stick.

As a member of the pro-games contingent, I would like to add one more comment. For me, the most important aspect of games is to take away students' hyper-consciousness of whatever point the game is being used to re-inforce. Although games are controlled, and arguably unnatural, if a game is fun enough somewhere along the way the goal shifts from using the language in a forced, conscious way to suceeding at the game.
This is probably why Larry's observations indicate that student ability seems lower, or that they don't seem to be "getting it". During a game, students will make a lot of mistakes they don't make doing, say, grammar fill-in-the-blanks. But the goal is for students to use the grammar in life - which is anything but a controlled circumstance!
This is the opportunity that the teacher can use to show the student that they need to work on this structure, use it in life, etc. Often students who can do grammar on paper believe they've "got it", and as we all know this usually just isn't true.
So games point out to students what mistakes pop out of their mouths when they are not focussing on correctness. This is definately useful in terms of expanding the students knowledge of their own abilities, and the contexts in which they make errors. A subltle reminder usually allows the student the chance for self-correction.
Larry's comment that "it doesn't seem to stick" implies that students should be able to learn and then use structures right away. But the process of making mistakes is important for students - as long as those errors are corrected. Games provide an opportunity for "safe" mistake making, i.e. safe meaning a non-threatening, low risk environment.
I would also like to add that research indicates that tasks learned while using multiple areas of the brain (e.g. tasks learned while doing physical action, or connected to music or visual stimuli) are likely to "stick" more throughly.
-Sharon Muldrew

[stephen]

Dear All

I have to say that I could not teach without activities; I prefer the terms to games. This is simply because students must use the target language. This means they must speak and write using this language, and activities provide an effective means of achieving this goal. However, I would like to add that this should be differentiated from doing an activity/ playing a game simply for the sake of entertainment alone (or for filling up time).

What is a good activity (or game)? (God, am I really going to set myself up for target practice by trying to define this? I must be feeling suicidal today, maybe I should just do something safer like walking round a ward of SARS patients.)

Ok, here goes.

A good activity is one thats inclusion in your lesson allows you to better achieve the aims of that lesson.

This obviously eliminates the edutainment element of activities/games while retaining activities which permit such important things as oral and written practice of target grammar or oral fluency work. Such activities should be appropriate and interesting to the students, but do not necessarily need to directly relate to students everyday life. For example, a speaking activity based on what students would do if they won the lottery is in my view perfectly valid for teaching the second conditional.

I think that the value of games/activities depends largely on how a good game/activity is defined.

Best wishes
Stephen

[LarryLatham]

However, I would like to add that this should be differentiated from doing an activity/ playing a game simply for the sake of entertainment alone (or for filling up time).

Therein lies the essential difference that divides the good from the rest, Stephen. Perhaps I have just been working in the wrong place, but I unfortunately have come across too many teachers who use activities as time fillers.

I like your definition just fine, by the way.

Larry Latham

[Joanne]

Can I add for the Pro games contingent: they can allow enough repetition of a functional/grammar point for it to stick without boring the pants off many students. The 'I know this so why are you making me do it again' factor can be reduced considerably; they can give your less able students to shine (and shouldn't everybody get a chance?); they can lighten th eload for those who are not learning English because they want to (For example, I teach at a company and employees have to study, many in the tenth and eleventh hour of a twelve-hour shift!)

Still not convinced? An example that springs to mind - two-team relay race against the clock with relative defining clauses. Student turns over a card has to describe the word to his/her group within 45 seconds using relative clauses - 'A baker' it's someone who bakes bread, the beach - it's a place where you can relax and swim etc. (1) students repeat 'til it sticks -understanding is one thing; remembering is another (2) students practise describing things to elicit a word (ESL students need to be able to do this) (3) students who really struggle with grammar points but are strong on vocab will be 'stars' for a change (4) students who have no interest in studying another language - there is only so much you can do- can enjoy the game.

Of course there are games that don't work, teachers who misuse/abuse them and some classes who genuinely don't like games, but if you never consider them, you're missing out on a resource folks. As for filling up time, I know teachers who waste class time without games by talking about themselves too much, making students read aloud/do manipulation exercises/ talk about things they really aren't interested in/provide too much activity feedback etc. You don't need games to be a poor teacher.

Rant over!

[will mcculloch]

Hi, it's a good discussion.

Of course, it seems reasonable and valid to draw up general lists of the various advantages and disadvantages of games - but how far can anyone go with this?

While "general" provides good guidelines, it seems to me that the value of any games activities will depend directly on the people within the group - their wants, needs, levels, and their own individual attitudes.

Games can be fun, valuable, educational - and a great way of underpinning more formal training with interesting, open interaction. The danger is perhaps that a teacher tries to force particular games onto a group ... and a potentially good opportunity may backfire due to lack of enthusiasm.

I feel that a good approach is to encourage students to discover games for themselves ( in the internet maybe)... find out which ones they consider to be valuable / helpful - and then let them introduce their own favourites into the classroom. This should lead to a more positive, fun, motivating and genuinely active learning experience for everyone.

Games , like everything else ( it seems to me), can range from being totally brilliant to an appalling disaster. Their success/ usefulness will probably depend on one thing only. .... the ability of the teacher to react to the ever changing dynamic within and without the classroom.

The real advantage is that they exist ( in abundance). The only possible disadvantage is that they could be used in the wrong way at the wrong time.

Hope you enjoyed writing the essay, by the way!

cu Will