Studies on games and language learning
Online games have been so popular with a wide age range from children to middle-age adults. Recent studies have even explored the role of online games in English language learning. Liberman (2006), for example, gives a thorough review of the literature regarding learning through playing computer games. The author categorizes the literature from nine perspectives: motivation to learn, perception and coordination, thinking and problem solving, knowledge, skills and behaviours, self-regulation and therapy, self-concepts, social relationships, and attitudes and values. Under each category, he gives a detailed review of relevant studies and articles.
A closer look at online games reveals that online games have a significant influence on players’ thinking and problem-solving abilities. Prensky (Liberman, 2006, p.384) suggests that ‘games with puzzles and complex questions may improve player’s ability to think logically and tactically. Simulation games can enhance scientific thinking,…and adventure games may increase…skills in observation, analysis of systems, and coaching of others’. Studies also found the effects of games on self-directed learning. Players pay attention, monitor and evaluate their own actions. Besides, games also have the backwash of self-monitoring, pattern recognizing, and so on.
An experience with a virtual community
As relatively new areas of research, online games for language learning purposes have a promising future in the TESL profession. One example is my experience with the online virtual society Second Life that has broadened my exposure to authentic English language when I visited the Texas A&M University (Aggieland). This is a virtual campus (Landmark: ‘Texas A&M University Second Life, 12th Man (157, 227, 26)’) built up by a group of faculty members, which functions a welcome venue for perspective students and their parents. Aggieland is actually a real place on the A&M University campus, serving with the same purpose. So, netizens can have a special experience with the university by visiting its virtual Aggieland.
My visit to Aggieland on Second Life was informative and exciting, as I talked through the Public Voice function with someone called Jim on the venue. He is one of the founders of this virtual campus, which took his team several months’ leisure time to have built up the basic facilities. Jim was friendly and kind to greet me and introduced an interesting thing on the far corner of the campus, the pyramid of Bloom’s taxonomy! Flying after Jim, I was lead to the model block pile that has three colourful dimensions of learning, teaching and assessing. While listening to Jim’s introduction, I moved my avatar around to have a clear view of the model.
I had a clear view of how knowledge and cognitive progress accumulate in our mind. Jim told me that knowledge could be divided into four levels: factual, conceptual, procedural and meta-cognitive. The cognitive progress is composed with six stages of remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating. Then, Jim moved to the knowledge dimension of the pyramid, and explained that remembering a fact was exemplified with listing primary and secondary colours, and as the tiers go higher, evaluating a fact could be interpreted as checking the consistency of sources, so on. Jim further recounted that they usually used this model to elicit discussion among advanced learners, who would reflect upon their own learning experience and identify at which stages of the model they are. ‘Most importantly’, Jim said, ‘the students may want to analyze why their knowledge or cognitive process stays at that level; and how, if possible, can they upgrade their knowledge to a higher level.’
Jim has given me a lively tutorial of learning methodology in English, and has introduced several resources of Bloom’s taxonomy available online. For example, two resources at the Wikipedia websites are for further reading.
http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Bloom%27s_Taxonomy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_Taxonomy.
Briefly, learning language could be contextualised in, say, a task on the online games that require effective communication between the players. Language teachers could also play a role in such virtual communities to put themselves in a less dominant position that they used to be in a classroom. The students could thus enjoy more autonomy in the task. But the point is that the tasks assigned to the students should be closely related to language learning and practicing. Otherwise, games could easily be a distraction from the learning purposes.
Reference
Lieberman, D. (2006) What can we learn from playing interactive games? In Vorderer & Bryant(eds.) Playing video games: Motives, responses and consequences. p.379-397. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,Inc.,Publishers.
Wednesday 21 April 2010
Tuesday 23 March 2010
Farewell to Google.cn
Google.cn has said goodbye to everyone this morning. For the millions of netizens in the mainland, 'google it' has to be used in past tense form. How long do we need to wait till the next ray of hope come?
Sunday 21 March 2010
Mark My Words
The Mark My Words toolbar installed on MS Word is convenient for teachers to comment on students' work. One of the merits is that lists of comments and explanations are ready for selection, and thus saving a lot of time for teachers. Another handy function is the resources links, which provides Google and other useful links for the learners. A third advantage is that the teachers can give marks on the grammar of the writing by clicking the 'comment summary' link, which shows all categories of grammar errors with frequencies.
But there are some points to be aware of. First, weaker students may probably need training in how to make use of the resources in a quick and efficient way, because these students tend to copy the sample sentences word by word, they would in an attempt to memorise its usage. This is not recommended since it is too time-consuming and inefficient. So, when using the resource links, the students need to know quick referencing skills.
But there are some points to be aware of. First, weaker students may probably need training in how to make use of the resources in a quick and efficient way, because these students tend to copy the sample sentences word by word, they would in an attempt to memorise its usage. This is not recommended since it is too time-consuming and inefficient. So, when using the resource links, the students need to know quick referencing skills.
Monday 15 March 2010
Three model lessons
Three model lessons of English language are presented on TVB education channel this morning, which are quite inspirational for teachers of English to consider integrating images, video clips, Windows Movie Maker and films in their classroom.
Lesson one: teach English with films (S 3 students)
The teacher plays a film to the class and let the students work on the PLOT and CHARACTERS analyses. The plot of the film is described in separate sentences, and jumbled up. All the students have to do is to work within groups, sorting out the correct order of the sentences. For the character analysis, students are given a matching exercise (maybe, did not understand clearly) to match the description of characters with their names. Another exercise of this part is to describe the characters with three words. The teacher also gives explanation to the film and the characters in order to help the students understand better.
Lesson two: vocabulary building with light and color (S 6 students)
The first section of the class is devoted to the description of facial expressions. The teacher shows a few photos of real people with various facial expressions, and asks the students to work out the emotions of these people. For example, the turned-down mouth corners suggest the person’s unhappiness. After the short discussion, the teacher moves on to putting a single light source on different positions around a volunteer’s face, so as to generate various effects of the person’s emotions.
This lesson teaches vocabulary of facial expressions and emotions in a straightforward way. By seeing the photos and the model student, the class has a better understanding of the meanings of the words. The teacher writes down the new vocabulary on the white board after the students learned them.
Lesson three: a project-based English language lesson (S 6 students)
The students do a project on one of a list of topics that include environmental pollution, work pressure, people’s health, and so on. The project requires the learners to collect a wide variety of resources such as photos, video clips, research reports, and statistics. After all information is collected, the students trim and edit the resources with Windows Movie Maker, integrating the materials into a project digital presentation. In the creation of the digital presentation, the learners are encouraged to use resources such as music, pictures, to make the presentation attractive to the audience.
The strength of this project is that it consolidates the learner’s English language in a practical way. The learners acquire English naturally in the process of doing their group work.
Lesson one: teach English with films (S 3 students)
The teacher plays a film to the class and let the students work on the PLOT and CHARACTERS analyses. The plot of the film is described in separate sentences, and jumbled up. All the students have to do is to work within groups, sorting out the correct order of the sentences. For the character analysis, students are given a matching exercise (maybe, did not understand clearly) to match the description of characters with their names. Another exercise of this part is to describe the characters with three words. The teacher also gives explanation to the film and the characters in order to help the students understand better.
Lesson two: vocabulary building with light and color (S 6 students)
The first section of the class is devoted to the description of facial expressions. The teacher shows a few photos of real people with various facial expressions, and asks the students to work out the emotions of these people. For example, the turned-down mouth corners suggest the person’s unhappiness. After the short discussion, the teacher moves on to putting a single light source on different positions around a volunteer’s face, so as to generate various effects of the person’s emotions.
This lesson teaches vocabulary of facial expressions and emotions in a straightforward way. By seeing the photos and the model student, the class has a better understanding of the meanings of the words. The teacher writes down the new vocabulary on the white board after the students learned them.
Lesson three: a project-based English language lesson (S 6 students)
The students do a project on one of a list of topics that include environmental pollution, work pressure, people’s health, and so on. The project requires the learners to collect a wide variety of resources such as photos, video clips, research reports, and statistics. After all information is collected, the students trim and edit the resources with Windows Movie Maker, integrating the materials into a project digital presentation. In the creation of the digital presentation, the learners are encouraged to use resources such as music, pictures, to make the presentation attractive to the audience.
The strength of this project is that it consolidates the learner’s English language in a practical way. The learners acquire English naturally in the process of doing their group work.
Wednesday 3 March 2010
Liou's (1994) IVD-based model and application : From a non-courseware supported perspective
Generally speaking, Liou’s IVD project has good implementation for CALL in classroom. This project is suitable for individual learning in front of a PC workstation, which provides a language learning courseware particularly designed for a movie. This IVD-based learning project weighs a lot because it gives students sufficient exposure to authentic English used in daily life. In her experiment, Liou has developed a four-unit teaching model to explore a movie. Admittedly, it is highly efficient to have readily available software assisting the learning, yet a more common fact is that many IVD resources are ‘original’, with no readily made learning software embedded in them. Then, how do we English language teachers make use of good movies for our teaching?
First, the plot of the movie should be made clear to the students. Instead of the embedded questions as shown in Figure 4 of Liou’s paper (p. 60), the teacher can show the students with prepared questions on a separate PowerPoint slide or Word document, to give the learners contextual hints or guidance for understanding the synopsis. It is worth mentioning that, as the movie is played to the whole class, each student should also be able to play the movie on their workstations. Wherever the teacher stops the movie and raises relevant questions, the students are going to rewind the film and look for the answers.
Second, the content of the movie needs to be ‘comprehensible’ to the students. By 'comprehensible' I mean that learners need to know the intended meaning of the speaker not only by consulting a dictionary, but more importantly, by reflecting how the learners themselves would have expressed the same meaning. For example, the students may hear a movie character say ‘Tom has been capped for his school rugby team for twice’. They’ve got to understand the past participle ‘capped’ in this utterance, and come up with their own interpretation like ‘Tom played for his school rugby team for twice’. Then the students are going to look at the context in which the word ‘capped’ is employed. At this point, the teacher can provide as much supporting information as possible, such as asking questions like ‘Is it used in a dialogue or a monologue? ’, ‘Is it a formal speech or a casual talk?’, or ‘What is the social identity of the speaker?’ and so on.
Last but not least, the students should be given access to online resources such as google.com, Google Dictionary, Wikipedia, and so on, whenever they have difficulty understanding the movie.
First, the plot of the movie should be made clear to the students. Instead of the embedded questions as shown in Figure 4 of Liou’s paper (p. 60), the teacher can show the students with prepared questions on a separate PowerPoint slide or Word document, to give the learners contextual hints or guidance for understanding the synopsis. It is worth mentioning that, as the movie is played to the whole class, each student should also be able to play the movie on their workstations. Wherever the teacher stops the movie and raises relevant questions, the students are going to rewind the film and look for the answers.
Second, the content of the movie needs to be ‘comprehensible’ to the students. By 'comprehensible' I mean that learners need to know the intended meaning of the speaker not only by consulting a dictionary, but more importantly, by reflecting how the learners themselves would have expressed the same meaning. For example, the students may hear a movie character say ‘Tom has been capped for his school rugby team for twice’. They’ve got to understand the past participle ‘capped’ in this utterance, and come up with their own interpretation like ‘Tom played for his school rugby team for twice’. Then the students are going to look at the context in which the word ‘capped’ is employed. At this point, the teacher can provide as much supporting information as possible, such as asking questions like ‘Is it used in a dialogue or a monologue? ’, ‘Is it a formal speech or a casual talk?’, or ‘What is the social identity of the speaker?’ and so on.
Last but not least, the students should be given access to online resources such as google.com, Google Dictionary, Wikipedia, and so on, whenever they have difficulty understanding the movie.
Monday 1 March 2010
Victory of the England rugby team, 2003: A listening comprehension activity
Clive Woodward and his brilliant team won the world cup in 2003, after a fierce ‘battle’ against Australia. The dramatic, fluent deliver of the ball in the last minute, or the deadly minute for the Australians, brought England to the world champion. Woodward’s brilliant young men did have the correct and cool mind in pressure: when 17 points drawn even, the players finished the smooth zigzag delivery and a final beautiful kick to beat Australians. Back in England, the heroes were warmly welcomed by tens of thousands of people as they sat on the bus parading down the streets. This was the glory for the whole country!
This topic can be used as a listening comprehension activity of 20 minutes, which starts with a brief introduction to the background of the match. Then the teacher plays the BBC radio programme to the whole class, based on which a few questions can be raised to facilitate the learners’ understanding of the radio interview. After that, the Youtube video clip of England rugby team’s playing the game in the last minute and their victory parade can be played to the class. The cooperation between the players in the match is elaborated in the radio programme. Video clip here facilitates learners’ comprehension of the radio interview.
For the radio programme, please see 'Sir Clive Woodward' section on
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr Only listen to from 6.20 to 10.20
Video clip on Youtube
This topic can be used as a listening comprehension activity of 20 minutes, which starts with a brief introduction to the background of the match. Then the teacher plays the BBC radio programme to the whole class, based on which a few questions can be raised to facilitate the learners’ understanding of the radio interview. After that, the Youtube video clip of England rugby team’s playing the game in the last minute and their victory parade can be played to the class. The cooperation between the players in the match is elaborated in the radio programme. Video clip here facilitates learners’ comprehension of the radio interview.
For the radio programme, please see 'Sir Clive Woodward' section on
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr Only listen to from 6.20 to 10.20
Video clip on Youtube
Sunday 28 February 2010
An interesting visit and English language learning
A visit to the Hong Kong Museum of History has been so informative to me and made me think about some task-based approaches of teaching English through this visit. Let me give a brief account of my visiting experience before moving on to the teaching reflection.
The tour to the museum was quite pressed with time as I had not finished all parts of exhibition on the two floors. Yet I did focused on some bits of the items such as the wedding costumes of the early 20th century, the fishermen’s life on boats, and the downtown life of people in between the 1930’s and 1970’s, and so on.
We can actually do an exercise of recounting a story with photos and text support. The students select one favorite historical event or object, recounting the history presented on the photos or in the instructions. Also, we can connect the history with our present life by comparing similar places, objects and the like. For example, the old tram presented in the museum is an early model of those still in service on the Hong Kong Island. They have similarity in the double-deck structure, and enormous differences in the internal design.
Another example is the bank notes issued in the old days. See the 500-dollar bill by HSBC in the 1930’s and the one used today, how are they different from each other?
Students can also work in groups to make a presentation of their discovery in the museum. Of course, the novel things they found and the ways they presented their findings will be marked.
The tour to the museum was quite pressed with time as I had not finished all parts of exhibition on the two floors. Yet I did focused on some bits of the items such as the wedding costumes of the early 20th century, the fishermen’s life on boats, and the downtown life of people in between the 1930’s and 1970’s, and so on.
We can actually do an exercise of recounting a story with photos and text support. The students select one favorite historical event or object, recounting the history presented on the photos or in the instructions. Also, we can connect the history with our present life by comparing similar places, objects and the like. For example, the old tram presented in the museum is an early model of those still in service on the Hong Kong Island. They have similarity in the double-deck structure, and enormous differences in the internal design.
Another example is the bank notes issued in the old days. See the 500-dollar bill by HSBC in the 1930’s and the one used today, how are they different from each other?
Students can also work in groups to make a presentation of their discovery in the museum. Of course, the novel things they found and the ways they presented their findings will be marked.
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