Spano, F. (2021). How I taught with a game in junior high school EFL classes - Ludic Language Pedagogy

Spano, F. (2021). How I taught with a game in junior high school EFL classes.

Authors: Spano, F.
Reviewed by: Brandon Essary, Niall McFadyen, Casey Nedry
Volume and page numbers: 3 (p. 93 – 133)
Date of publication: 2021/08/13
Keywords: CEFR, CEFR-J, GBT, Kotoba Rollers, LLP, TBLT.
Cite: Spano, F. (2021). How I taught with a game in junior high school EFL classes. Ludic Language Pedagogy, 3, 93-133.https://doi.org/10.55853/llp_v3Wt2

Background: In the Japanese junior high school where I taught English for three years, thanks to the soon-to-come introduction of the new action-oriented (or task-based) curriculum, the CEFR-J (Japanese adaptation of the European CEFR) I could introduce a game as a task-based language teaching tool..
Aim: Show a practical example of how ludic resources can be adopted as pedagogical solutions and indirectly used to reach/attain curriculum goals, in my case, national curriculum goals: the CEFR-J descriptors.
Teaching methods: Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT) with frequent teacher mediation.
Research methods: Evaluation, based on qualitative data.
Results: Students’ fluency with in-game lingo and their communication skills improved. Also, thanks to the TBLT structure and the cooperative nature of the game, students felt like they gained better interpersonal skills.
Conclusion: The in-game language range of the chosen game appears to be limited, but the practice and the experience with it paves the way for more language and context-rich games. Also this study shows how, with a lot of work from the teacher, social deduction games can be successfully implemented into an action-oriented curriculum while also fostering social skills useful even outside the classroom.