Gamification in English Learning Classroom: Strategy Games

First of all, I am a huge fan of Big Fish Games, and I really enjoy their hidden objects game. My favorite one is The Black Cat which is adapted from Edgar Ellen Poe’s novel. Since I had read the novel before, I already knew the plot and the ending of the game. But the game treated you with delicate pictures and lifelike sound effects. I was totally attracted by its tense scenes and creepy atmosphere. As you know, hidden objects games always have a lot of vocabulary which you need to know and to pick them out from a mess picture. So you can also learn some new words. And I’m pretty sure that I learned and memorized the word “cane” from The Black Cat because it occurred several times. However, I won’t recommend this to young students for it is not free and the some of the scene is really scary.

    What I would like to introduce is Big Fish’s Games: The Dark Manor (available for PC, ipad and iphone). It is a combination of strategy game and hidden objects. The player is the heir of a ghost manor (still a little bit horrible but I think it is acceptable to high school students). The mission is to manage the manor and try to set other friendly ghosts free. The following the pictures are the scenes from my manor. And I am still a beginner (only level 2).

    If I could apply this game in the language teaching, my objectives will be:

    To enlarge student’s vocabulary: In the game, the player has to match the correct pictures with the words to move on to a new chapter of the story. So during this process, students should know the meaning of the word. If they don’t, they can look them up in dictionaries. What if they don’t want to look up the dictionary and randomly point their fingers on the screen? Don’t worry. The game itself will warn the player and pause the game for seconds. In order to check whether students are familiar with the words that occur in the game, I could make an informal quiz, and the student who has remembered most words will be awarded a prize.

    To improve writing skills in a long-term practice: The setting of the game is based on a narrative story and has a character upgrade system. In other words, the game could be played for a quite long time. Thus, I could ask my students to write a daily “management diary” which let students write down what they did in the game, how long they played the game, or what they feel about today’s game. This will help students to form a habit of writing. Although it is in the form of diary, I will focus on the grammar and content, and give them feedbacks. I think this will improve students’ writing gradually. And I could assess this objective through comparing their outputs and I’m sure I will find the improvements. (Similar as the idea in Casual Game)  

    All in all, strategy games could stimulate players’ autonomous decision-making skills and internal decisions. Thus, we can use the game to catch students’ attentions. And then the game itself will naturally stimulate the language learning process. By the way, if you are interested in this kind of hidden objects games, I am willing to recommend some to you, but the games might not be free.