Our brain consists of three main parts: the ancient reptilian part, the limbic system, and the neocortex. When a student feels fear, their brain switches to the reptilian part, leading to three primary reactions: fight, flight, or freeze. This means that at times of stress, the student’s brain is unable to absorb new information because the reptilian brain is active instead of the neocortex.

When students feel comfortable and confident in the company of their peers and teacher, the learning process becomes much more effective. Our task as teachers is to create an atmosphere where every student feels like part of a team.

👥 Step 1: Students in any educational group need to first get to know each other, feel a sense of belonging to the group, and feel accepted. We should play games aimed at giving everyone a chance to talk about themselves, be heard, and be accepted.

How do we usually introduce ourselves in class? We ask students to talk about themselves or play “Two Truths, One Lie.”

What happens to your student who comes to the first lesson? Regardless of their age, teenager or adult, they are scared, even if they don’t realize it. They feel scared, uncomfortable, they don’t know the people around them, they don’t know you, and they would feel very shy to speak in their native language, let alone in a foreign one, which is a huge step out of their comfort zone. If they also have to be creative and come up with “Two Truths, One Lie,” it becomes even more challenging.

When students come to the first lesson, regardless of whether they are teenagers or adults, they may feel fear and insecurity. Forcing them to introduce themselves right away can only amplify these feelings, especially if the group is already bonded and they are the newcomer. It’s important to avoid situations where students are put in an awkward position by being asked to talk about themselves in front of everyone.

When students come to the first lesson, they may feel fear and insecurity. It’s important to avoid situations where students are put in an awkward position by being asked to talk about themselves in front of everyone. With new groups, I start introductions through non-verbal ways.

🎲 Game: Line Game

How to play:

Students stand in a line and step forward if they agree with the teacher’s question.

The task can be modified to suit different age groups and skill levels.

Stand up/sit down, move to the right or left wall, raise/lower hands, etc.

Online version:

The teacher asks general questions.

Students respond by turning their video on or off.

Game Variation: “Meet in the Center”

Students stand on either side of the room.

They move to the center, answering questions. Each step forward is made when answering “yes.”

The goal is for all students to meet in the center and shake hands.

📖 Using Textbook Assignments

Often, textbooks contain lists of questions that students should discuss in pairs or groups. Such tasks can meet resistance from teenagers as they may not always understand the purpose of these questions or be interested in their peers’ answers. To make this process more engaging, it can be turned into a game. For example, the game “Facts, Facts, Facts,” where students ask each other questions and must remember the answers. This task also works well with lists of icebreaker questions.

🕹 Game: Facts, Facts, Facts

1) Divide students into groups.

2) Each group has 10 minutes to complete the task: answer questions about themselves or questions from the textbook.

It is important to remember the information as it will be needed for the next stage of the game.

3) Each group introduces their friends. Speaking about oneself is forbidden — they can only talk about other participants.

Time for presentation — 1 minute.

The group that can say the most facts wins.

This activity is aimed not only at getting to know each other but also at developing listening and memory skills. Often, students communicate in pairs or groups but do not remember the information they are told. This exercise encourages them to listen to each other more attentively as they understand they will need to retell information about their classmates.

🕸 Game: Web

The leader throws a ball of yarn to one of the students, introducing themselves and sharing a fact about themselves.

The student holds the yarn, also introduces themselves and shares a fact, then throws the ball further.

This can be done for one or several rounds.

Later, they can untangle the web, recalling who said what.

Online version:

Place photos or names of students on a collaborative board.

While sharing a fact, a student draws an arrow from their photo to another student’s photo.

Try these activities with your students if you want them to be comfortable in your class.

Leaders of language schools and teachers often note that while everything goes well with students in elementary school, there is a dropout when transitioning to middle school. Students become less engaged, activity levels drop, and what worked before no longer yields results. Teachers who previously worked with younger children often face difficulties when trying to apply the same methods to teenagers. This can be frustrating, as favorite games and activities no longer evoke the same response.

Key Aspects of Working with Teenagers

When working with a teenage audience, especially children aged 9–11, it’s essential to understand that they are significantly different from younger students. To work successfully with this age group, consider three key aspects: safety, meaning, and challenge.

Safety

For teenagers, a sense of safety is crucial. This includes both physical and emotional safety. They need to feel that their opinions are respected, that they can freely express their thoughts, and that they will not be judged for mistakes. It’s important to create a classroom atmosphere where every student feels comfortable and confident.

Meaning

Teenagers are very sensitive to how meaningful they perceive their activities to be. If they don’t understand why they need to learn a particular material, they lose interest. The teacher’s task is to show students the practical application of their knowledge and explain how it can be useful in their lives.

Challenge

Teenagers love challenges. They want to feel that they can handle difficult tasks, grow, and develop. It’s important to give them assignments that stimulate their thinking and contribute to skill development.

Understanding Brain Function

Our brain consists of three parts: the reptilian brain, the limbic system, and the neocortex. The reptilian brain is responsible for survival and forms the “fight, flight, freeze” reactions. The limbic system manages emotions and feelings. The neocortex is responsible for cognitive functions and learning.

When a person is stressed, the reptilian brain is activated, blocking the transmission of impulses to the neocortex where learning occurs. Therefore, when students enter an unfamiliar group, they may experience stress, and our task is to help them feel comfortable so they can learn effectively.

Icebreakers and Introduction Games

Typically, the first lessons start with introduction games. These can be various icebreakers that help students get to know each other better, like sharing something about themselves or creating two truths and one lie. However, it’s important to consider the level of stress a teenager might feel in a new environment.

Imagine an 11–12-year-old child coming into a new group, not knowing anyone, and feeling scared. The teacher, whom they see for the first time, asks them to talk about themselves or come up with truths and a lie about themselves. The stress level skyrockets, and in such conditions, the child starts thinking with their reptilian brain, making the learning process difficult.

Student Reactions to Stress

In such situations, there are three typical reactions:

• Freeze: Students freeze and almost do not respond, speaking monosyllabically: “yes” or “no.” This is a typical stress reaction, wanting to become invisible to avoid attention.
• Flight: The student refuses to attend classes, saying at home: “I don’t want to go, I didn’t like it.” This leads to losses for the educational center.
• Fight: Students start trolling, showing aggression or sarcasm as a defensive reaction to stress.

Importance of Creating a Safe Environment

Safety is paramount. It’s crucial to create a learning environment where students feel protected. This is especially important for teenagers who are very sensitive to their peers’ opinions. They work well in groups, pairs, and teams if a safe and comfortable atmosphere is created.

Team Building as a Key to Success

Forming a team is essential for successful work with teenagers.

Stages of Group Formation

1. Forming: During the first month, the group formation process takes place. It’s important to start with non-verbal games and games requiring monosyllabic answers. For example, a game involving turning cameras on and off is a great start. If you answer “yes” to a question, you turn on your video (stand up or raise your hand). If you answer “no,” you turn off your video (sit down/do not raise your hand). This way, communication happens, and we learn something about each other without speaking and experiencing stress.
2. Storming: Usually begins in October. Students test each other’s and the teacher’s boundaries. Discipline issues and conflicts arise. At this stage, fun, creative, and tactile games work well.
3. Norming: Starts in November. By this stage, the group is formed, and more serious tasks, such as studying English, can be introduced.

Games for Different Stages

At the forming stage, it’s important to use games that do not require much emotional involvement. As you transition to the storming stage, introduce oxytocin-inducing games that promote the production of oxytocin — the hormone of attachment and love. These games help soften conflicts and strengthen group bonds.

Even in an online format, oxytocin production can be stimulated through various activities aimed at student interaction.

The Importance of Group Dynamics

When working with teenagers, it is crucial to focus on group cohesion. This is necessary to create a safe environment where learning can be effective. If students are stressed and using only their “reptilian brain,” the learning process slows down, and information is hard to absorb.

When you bring a boardgame with a dice to the classroom and students move along the board rolling a dice, making grammatically correct sentences, this is what we call «broccoli in chocolate.» Unfortunately, English teachers quite often have a more limited game experience than their students. Experienced players don’t like games where the only game mechanics are dice rolling and giving correct answers. Making meaningful choices and working out their own strategy is what our students want from the games.

What makes a game alive?

So, a good game mechnics is the backbone of any game. Hangman, Memory, Tic-tac-toe, Battleships, are examples of games where students make meaningful decisions. There are 2 games in the list, which stand out: Hangman and Battleships. These are the games with a particular setting. When students play Hangman they try to escape an execution. In Battleships they fight with the enemy fleet in a sea battle.

If the game mechanics is the skeleton of the game, than the game setting is the soul of the game. Game setting creates the atmosphere, arises feelings and emotions which stay with our students when the game is over. And in some cases it might even save the game with poor or zero mechanics.

Tell a story

Not long ago my colleague from StudyCraft, Irina Mudritsyna, came up with the idea of making a Spelling Pack for primary students. Her pain as a teacher was doing spelling drills to prepare kids for Starters exam. Every teacher knows that writing lines is a useful activity, but you can hardly engage your students with it. So teachers download numerous worksheets with crosswords, wordsearches and other spelling activities to make spelling practice vivid and lively.

We took the first topic Transport and prepared a number of intersting spelling activities. But along with it we added a story to our Spelling Pack. A naughty alien, Moondzy, took us to a deserted island. We must do his tasks if we want to escape from the island.

So, the first thing you can do to make your game alive is to tell the story. People like stories. We tell fairy tales to babies before going to bed, we tell horror stories to our friends in summer camps, we make up stories when we play party games.

To make up a story think about a hero and an antihero, and what kind of conflict they have. Make the conflict as epic as possible. In our story Moondzy was the antihero and he imprisoned the students on the island.

Another thing to think about is the antihero’s motives. Why does he do harm to the heroes? When the antihero has his character and background, it helps students to be emotionally more attached to the game. In our story Moondzy was kind, but he looked gloomy and did naughty things as he was lonely and bored. Every time students did his task correctly, they received a sticker with Moondzy’s happy face. Every sticker they put on marked spots on the map to trace the path to the escape.

The final task was a crossword. When students solved the crossword they could read the word boat. So, they found a boat and could sail away.

How to set the scene

Teachers often worry how to set up the story. They think that it will be time-consuming as they will need to prepare a lot of props to put students into the game atmosphere. The truth is that the largest constructor of atmosphere is the player’s imagination. You start telling a story and your students see it in their minds.

Think about some elements and details: pictures, small objects, sounds and music to help you.

Moondzy game went on with minimum preparation: a picture of Moondzy, stickers with his happy face and the map.

It is very important to make the onboarding phase of the game memorable. We put some sea pebbles in a bag and asked our students to put their hands into the bag and guess what was in the bag. When they guessed correctly, we turned on the sound of the sea and switched off the light. We were by the sea. At this moment the teacher told the story and imagination did all the work.

To add extra thrill and excitement we did all spelling tasks in complete darkness using only one flashlight.

Every lesson students waited for the spelling part of the lesson. They had to touch pebbles to be brought from the classroom to the island.

So, as you see, you don’t need a lot of props. The combination of imagery, sound, music, story, one object as the symbol of the story — and students are immersed into the game.

So, next time when you are going to revise grammar tell your students that, they are starship troopers and fight with a hostile species known as Arachnids. Use a movie trailer to set up the scene. Every time a student makes a grammar mistake put a red sticker on him to symbolize a wound.

To learn how to identify key words in a sentence, take your students to a strange forest. If we touch poisonous plants, we start seeing hallucinations (non-key words). Also, there are berries to cure us (key-words). You can get cured if you restore the sentence by key-words.

It is easy to turn every lesson into an adventure. And the only thing you need is your students’ imagination.

We still use games from time to time to spice up our lessons, but students are often reluctant to play games. So, we conclude that our students are too big to play and, games are more appropriate for primary than for secondary school.

Why do teenagers refuse to play in the classroom but spend hours playing computer games at home then?

Aren’t we too fast with the conclusions?

So, rule # 1. Start with teambuilding activities first.

Once I asked my students, who I’d been working with for two years, to write down what they disliked about my lessons. I expected complains about homework, tests and other academic issues. But the answers really astonished me. For example, some younger girls didn’t like the way the older girls looked at them. Some boys couldn’t get on well either. Students were too absorbed in the personal problems, to think about classes, curriculum, exams and their teacher.

Games can’t make our lessons great, unless we solve most of our students interpersonal problems in the first place.

It’s normal for any person to experience moments of uncertainty and low self-esteem. But for teenagers the question of self-confidence becomes crucial. When a teacher suggests playing a game, a teenage student thinks about the way he or she will look in the game. Will I look stupid? What if I fail? Teenagers unlike primary schoolchildren are afraid of making mistakes in front of the others.

If students in the group don’t feel comfortable and safe with one another, they are not ready to play.

You will need two or three lessons playing teambuilding games to help your students build up relations. And if a new student joins your group, you’ll have to start teambuilding once again. This is not a waste of time. Building a team will contribute to better results in the end.

Let me give you an example of teambuilding activity from http://www.ventureteambuilding.co.uk/

Robots

Total time: 30 minutes

Group size: 6 to 12

What it is: In this fun blindfold activity, sub-teams compete against each other by guiding their blindfolded teammate to retrieve a ‘bomb’. The first sub-team to retrieve the ‘bomb’ wins the game.

Why it’s great for teens: This activity encourages trust between team members and helps teenagers to develop their communication skills (verbal and non-verbal). It also highlights the power of cooperation and how working together can help achieve a goal. Robots can be a frustrating activity for teams that do not communicate well, so it can also teach teens how to better manage their feelings.

You can modify this activity by adding tactile elements. Ask a girl to hold a blindfolded boy on the shoulders and guide him round the classroom and the other way. This modification really helped me to release the tension between girls and boys in the group when a new handsome student joined the group and half of the girls fell in love with him.

Team building helps teenagers to get engaged, connect with each other and increases efficiency of group work.

Rule # 2. Choose games suitable for experienced players.

How do we understand that this game is childish and not suitable for teens? Usually we look at the pictures and the setting of the game. «Feed the animals in the zoo» or «save the kitten» along with cartoon-like flash cards make us understand that we deal with the game for little kids.

And how often do you pay attention to game mechanics in the game you choose?

Do you personaly enjoy playing tic-tac-toe with your friends when you get together for a drink? Probably it is not that entertaining anymore since you discovered poker!

In primary school your students were happy enough with games based on dice rolling mechanic. Secondary school students already know that they can’t influence the results on the dice and thus the result of the game. It becomes boring. That’s why all types of “Snakes and ladders” often fail in secondary school unless it is the only alternative to grammar exercises.

If to advance in the game you must give a correct answer, it also reduces enthusiasm of the player. Imagine running 100 meters race with your athlete friend everyday. If you are not skilled enough, it sooner or later becomes obvious that you cannot win and the game becomes boring for you. By the way, it is neither interesting for your skilled friend.

That’s why I don’t like playing with my students games, where they must make grammatically correct sentences in order to move along the board.

Choosing games for our lessons we never think of our students as players. We look at grammar, vocabulary and what pedagogical result the game will provide. But a good game is a series of meaningful choices made by a player. A game must give him a number of possible strategies of winning. That keeps player engaged and motivated, even if he’s not skilled enough. Otherwise he or she doesn’t want to keep on playing.

Hangman is a good example of a simple game where students make meaningful decisions. They decide if they want to start with a vowel or a consonant, the first letter or the last. Students can evaluate how many vowels there are in the word or start with the most frequent ones. Actually, you can find even websites in the Internet devoted to best strategies in Hangman.

Will your own teenage son or daughter agree to play an original version of “Snakes and ladders” with you on holiday intentionally? You’d better not try! You’d rather suggest “Carcassonne”, “Evolution” or “Mafia.” So, what then makes you choose “Snakes and ladders” for your English lesson with teenage groups?

Along with getting older, the students we teach get more and more experienced in playing games. Probably their first encounters with video and board games were at the age of two or three. Since then they have spent countless hours playing really cool games made by the best game designers.

Do you think a teacher can compete? It is extremely difficult to catch students’ interest with educational games, which are mainly created by teachers not experienced in game design.

Rule # 3. Behave as a “good” game master not as a “bad” teacher.

There is a big difference between playing a game and running a game. As an author of games I do know that even an excellent game can fail because of the poor game master — the person who runs the game.

Let’s have a look at some common mistakes of running a game in the classroom.

Imagine that you play football, and every time you score, the referee stops the game and asks you to give parameters of the ball trajectory. And if you fail to give a correct answer, he doesn’t score. The player has worked out how to He managed to pick up the ball in his own penalty area before running the length of the pitch to slot past the opposition goalkeeper. On his way he evaded three defenders with consummate ease.

If the player’s aim in the game is to collect two matching cards, award the player with a point no matter if he can or cannot make a grammatically correct sentence afterwards. It’s a game, not a test. As an English teacher, of course, you care about proper grammar, but why don’t just give an extra point for a correct sentence?

Good game masters love their players and try to avoid unnecessary punishment in their games. They reward students for successful moves rather than punish and fine for mistakes.

Scientific research proved that teenagers and adults learn in a different way. When teens learn they prefer to seek rewards rather than to avoid punishments, whereas adults learn to seek and avoid both equally.

Award rather than punish in your games.

Rule # 4. Don’t diminish the importance of victory in the game.

In the 21st century we care too much about unity, cooperation and support. We don’t want too much competition in our classroom because defeat can upset some of our students. To make all students happy teachers sometimes favor weaker students, give them extra points for attitude and hard work. When you support weak students in this way, other students understand that the game is not fair and lose motivation.

These problems occur only if you substitute games, where any player can choose his or her own strategy for winning, with contests, based merely on students skills, such as knowledge, speed of reaction, etc.

I don’t want to say that you must avoid highly competitive contest. But they are good only in groups where the teacher has spent enough time on teambuilding, where students are supportive and respect one another.

If your students still need some time to build up a team you can always choose a noncompetitive game. Have a look at PvE (Person versus Environment) games, where students fight against external enemies or threats.

Rule # 5. Remember to have fun.

When you play the game with your students don’t correct too much. Every time you make a pause the dynamics of the game slow down and students lose interest. Enjoy the game and don’t be obsessed with the discipline. Children shout and jump around because they are alive.

When I talk about RPGs I do not mean Drama activities and Role-plays “In a café,” “At the doctor’s,” which many teachers are familiar with. RPGs are a special type of a game, which is an interactive story with only basic plot elements. Players describe their actions through narrative and this is how the story develops. The players make decisions based on their traits of character and special skills (they describe them in Character Profile at the beginning of the game). To see if players’ decisions are successful or not, we use a 20-sided dice. A person, who makes a decision, rolls the dice and if the result is “successful” (e.g. from 15 to 20) his or her suggested action is a success, but if not — he or she fails and something bad happens. Players roll a dice to every action or move they make during the RPG.

The first RPG was Dungeon&Dragons which dates back to 1974. Lot’s of different RPG systems with sophisticated rules have appeared since then. When we use RPG at English lessons we should make them as simple as possible and focus on narrative more than on mechanics of dice rolling.

Player Character

In RPGs players may create Player Characters (PC). Each PC has a number of different characteristics that represent their skills and determine their likelihood to succeed at a given task.

Let’s have a look at the procedure of creating a PC at the lesson.

Each player gets a Character Profile where they can write their name or a nickname, draw an avatar and write down their skills and number of points for each of them that will show how good they are at it.

E.g. Mary writes two skills: “climbing” and “jumping”. She rolls a dice twice — one time for each skill. The first result is “4”, the second result is “1”. So, she writes in her Character Profile:

4 climbing

1 jumping

Players can use their special skills during the game. If in the course of the game Mary wants to jump over the pit, 4 points will be added to her result on the dice. So, if we agree that a successful action is 15 and more and the dice showed 12, Mary adds 4 more points of her jumping skill and has 16 as a total.

Higher-level students may be asked to write down the way their character looks and some facts from his biography and relationship with other characters. The character description can be based on a reading text or a book used for home-reading.

Teacher’s role

The teacher performs the role of a game master (GM). GM outlines the story and thinks of some obstacles which the players must overcome using the target language. The GM narrates the story, describes situations and places, creates obstacles and comes up with different consequences during the game. GM doesn’t create his own PC and doesn’t affect the game from “the inside” like other players do, but he can help the players to come up with their own decisions and see if taken actions are possible due to the world mechanics. Also, he can play for Non-Player-Characters (NPC), who players meet in the course of the game and have conversations with.

The GM is also responsible for applying the rules of the game and making a decision when a question about the rules arises.

The Game Procedure

But neither a GM, nor players know how the story will develop as it depends on the ideas the players come up with while playing.

As the game is played through verbal interaction, it is ideal for English lessons and provides authentic output. Students are deeply involved in the game and use the language only as a means of solving game problems.

Before the lesson the teacher thinks about a few obstacles which his students will overcome using the target language.

E.g. target language: out of, into, over, across, along, up, down, through, away from, round, under.

Tell your students that there is a princess in the tall tower and they must save her. To get to the tower they should walk along a road with a wall brick on both sides. On their way they see a pit. What can they do?

Students come up with a number of different ideas, e.g. jump over the pit. They roll a dice and check if they succeed or not. If they fail to perform an action, the teacher says that they fall into the pit. Now they have to decide how to get out of the pit.

As you can see, every time they face a problem they describe their possible actions using target vocabulary. To make sure that they activate all the words you add some other obstacles on their way: a river with a boat and a gate in the tower.

There is no plot in the RPG because only players decide what move to take and how to solve

game problems.

Game Example

There are three students playing, each person has got three skills.

Alex has got: climbing (3), jumping (2), fighting (4).

Mary has got: searching for small items (5), discovering new trails (1), curing people (6).

Peter has got: making fire (3), climbing (5), chopping wood (6).

RPG starts. Game master (GM) describes the situation: “We can finally see the chest on the top of the hill. We are in the forest and we can see a trail in front of us, but it is blocked with huge rocks and trees. What are you going to do?”

A: “Is the chest far from us?”

GM: “Yes, it’s quite far, and you can see only the top of the hill above the trees.”

A: “OK, I’ll climb the rocks which block the road.”

M: “You may fall and hurt yourself.”

A: “Sure, but we need to deal with this situation.”

P: “Let me climb, I’m better at climbing.”

Peter rolls 1d20 (1 20-sides dice). Result: 9 + 5 (for the skill “climbing) = 14 (not successful)

GM: “You couldn’t climb up and you fell down. Let’s see what happens to you.”

GM rolls 1d20. Result: 3 (not successful).

GM: “The rock was too high for you and you were not lucky enough. You’ve got a leg dislocation. You can’t climb and even walking is painful for you.”

M: “I can cure people! I can help him. It can’t be worse, right?”

GM: “Anything can happen, but you can try, at least”

M: “OK, I’ll try”

Mary rolls 1d20. Result: 16 + 6 (for the skill “treating people”) = 22 (successful)

GM: “Peter’s leg is fine now, but he needs to recover because his leg still hurts a bit.”

A: “May be I will try to climb?”

M: “I have got a skill “discovering new trails”. I’ll explore the area”

Mary rolls 1d20. Result: 15 + 1 (for the skill “discovering new trails”) = 16 (successful)

GM: “You’ve been very observant and you have found a small trail. Do you want to follow it?”

M: “Yes, of course”

GM: “While walking through the forest the rain starts. And it becomes heavier and heavier. What are you going to do?”

P: “We can assemble a shelter”

GM: “You can assemble it with the wood you’ve already got”

P: “How much do we need?”

GM rolls the 1d6 (6-sides dice). Result: 4

GM: “You need 4 pieces”

M: “Let’s assemble a shelter”

Mary rolls 1d20. Result: 19 (successful). Mary gives 4 “pieces of wood”(resources that the student got while completing previous tasks)

GM: “You have got a shelter. It’s big enough for everyone so no one stays in the rain. It is very cold outside”

P: “How much wood do I need to make a fire?”

GM rolls the 1d6 (6-sides dice). Result: 5

GM: “You need 5 pieces”

P: “OK, I’ll make a fire”

Peter rolls 1d20. Result: 19 (successful). Peter gives 5 “pieces of wood”

GM: “Now you feel warm. After a while the rain stops and you can move on”

A: “Great. Let’s go”

GM: “You reach the hill. There is a small box on top of the hill”

P: “I’ll climb it”

GM: “It’s very wet and slippery. You need equipment to climb up. It’s -5 for dice”

M: “Oh. OK. I’ll explore the area, maybe I can find something”.

Mary rolls 1d20. Result: 9 (not successful)

GM: “Sorry, but you haven’t found anything useful”

A: “Can I try?”

GM: “Sure. Maybe you are luckier?”

A: “I’m exploring the area”

Alex rolls 1d20. Result: 16 (successful).

GM: “Yes, you are really lucky and you have found an axe.”

P: “Can we make a ladder?”

GM: “Yes, why not?”

P: “I’ll roll the dice.”

GM: “But wait, what are you going to make a ladder with? Do you know how much wood you need?”

P: “Yes, sorry. How many pieces of wood do we need?”

GM rolls the 1d6. Result: 6

GM: “You need 12 pieces of wood”

Alex, Mary and Peter give 4 “pieces of wood” each. Peter rolls 1d20. Result: 16 (successful).

GM: “Great! Now you’ve got a ladder. Who is going to climb it?”

A: “Me. I’ll climb it.”

GM: “But be careful. You can only lean this ladder against the rock. It might be dangerous to climb the ladder without any help.”

M: “I will hold the ladder.”

A: “I’m trying to climb.”

Alex rolls 1d20. Result: 13 + 3 (for the skill “climbing) = 16 (successful).

GM: “You’ve climbed easily to the top of the hill. You can see there a small metal box.”

A: “I’ll open it.”

GM: “No, you can’t do this. It seems to be locked.”

A: “Well, then I’ll take it and throw it down.”

GM rolls 1d20. Result: 19.

GM: “When the box hits the ground its lock breaks. Now the box is open and you can see some papers there. Congratulations! You’ve done it!”

Conclusion

RPGs are a good alternative to traditional speaking activities that we use in the classroom. As they are best played in small groups of 4–5 students they can be used as a quick-fix when half of your group is absent. They do not require lots of preparation and can be used as a low-resource consolidation activity to revise and recycle the language at any time.

To keep a long-term interest in our lessons we employ intrinsic motivation. According to D.Pink intrinsic motivation consists of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose, which we discussed in the second article as well as ways of applying them to our lessons.

So, gamification helps us to reconsider the traditional lesson plan and it demands a lot of energy and dedication from the teacher. Can we find a less stressful and time-consuming way of motivation?

Educational games and gamification

Very often when teachers hear the word gamification they think that we will talk about playing educational games at the lessons. Which is not correct. Gamification is the use of game elements and game principles in the classroom. It is a long-lasting process, which takes a series of lessons.

On the contrary, educational games are used normally to practice target language at some point at the lesson. Educational games are easy to find and they don’t need lots of preparation.

Gamification has become a buzz word for the last six years or so, while educational games are a mainstream. The first researches on the association between games and learning date back to the mid twentieth century. The benefits of games are obvious: they enhance motivation, provide authentic output for the language, improve students’ social skills. Still many teachers try to minimize the use of games at their lessons.

I conducted a survey among my colleagues how often they use games at their lessons. The results showed that on average English teachers spend about 10% of their lesson time playing games, mostly as warming up activities, or as a rewarding activity in the end of the class.

Answering the question why they don’t play in the classroom, teachers say that their students are too adult to play. But if you ask the same students how they spend their past time, you’ll definitely receive an answer — playing video games and board games with their friends. An average young adult in the UK spends 22 hours a week playing computer games. So, I strongly believe that it’s our preconceived ideas that stop us from playing games at the lessons.

Games vs activities

There is another category of teachers, who after a few attempts have come to the conclusion that their students don’t like games. The problem here lies in the common misconception that any interactive activity is called a game. One of the best definitions of the game states that the game is a series of meaningful decisions, which influence the outcome of the game. If a player doesn’t feel that his actions affect the flow of the game he loses interest and motivation.

When I analysed the games, which I found in the Internet on the request ELT games, most of them turned out to be different activities, not real games. Let’s have a look at some really popular games and activities which are used at English lessons.

Role-play In a café. This is an activity where one student performs a role of a waiter and another is a guest. They act out a conversation in a café. Unfortunately, these type of simulation activities can not engage anyone older than 4 years old unless you add elements of strategy to this simulation.

Adding some extra rules and players’ goals, you turn a simple simulation into a game, which is interesting to play for teens and adults. For example, a student has a certain amount of money and he needs 2000 calories to be fed; go to a café and try to get a more nourishing meal for less money.

Various crosswords are very popular. Is crosswords a game? In fact, it is not a game, it is just a puzzle as you have only one correct answer and can not make any meaningful decisions which influence the outcome. You either know the correct answer or not. That’s why crosswords are not very engaging for teens and adults as well as wordsearches and other puzzles unless you add some game elements to them.

The most obvious thing is to add a competitive element when you divide the group into two teams and the group who completes the task first is the winner. Or you can set a time limit and the person who could come up with the greatest number of correct answers within, let’s say, two minutes is the winner.

The truth is that competitions as well as puzzles are not real games. Actually they just measure intellectual abilities of our students. The good thing is that they are anyway much more enjoyable than boring exercises from coursebooks.

How to gamify your coursebook

If you are not ready to go into gamification or, on the opposite, want to enhance your gamification framework try to turn the most common exercises from your coursebook into games and competitions.

Let’s have a look at the most popular exercises and how we can transform them. Video illustrations to these activities can be viewed on Youtube channel.

Match a word and a picture exercise is often found in the beginning of the vocabulary section in the coursebook. Here are some activities to be used instead of matching exercises.

1) Print the words on separate stripes of paper and put them on the table face up. Ask your students to walk round the table. You show them a flashcard and they have to slap the corresponding word card on the table.

2) Put worcards and flashcards into two separate piles on the table face down. A student opens the first worcard and flashcard and if they match, he can keep them. The winner is the person with the biggest number of wordcard/flashcard sets.

3) Bingo. Ask your students to write down any 5 words from your target vocabulary. When your students are ready, start showing them the flashcards one after another. When a student sees the flashcard, which matches one of the words he has got in his list, he crosses it out. The first person to cross out all the words and to cry out Bingo, is the winner.

Although the activities above refer to competitions, students like playing them.

Pelmanism is an example of a real game, made on memory mechanics, which we can use to replace a matching exercise.

Put wordcards and flashcards on the table face down. Students take turns to play. At their turn they open two cards, one flashcard and one wordcard, of their choice from the layout. If they match, a student keeps these two cards. If they do not match, a student turns them face down, without changing their position in the layout, and it is the next students’s turn. The winner is the person with the biggest number of matching pairs.

Repeat the words is another boring exercise from the coursebook. How can we spice it up?

1) Line up the students in two teams. Give the two students at the front each a flash card. When you say go, the first in line says the word and passes the flash card over their head, the next student says the word and passes the card under between their legs, etc. The last student in line races to the front to hand the flashcard to the teacher and says the word. The first team gets a point. (submitted by Sarah Litwin-Schmid).

2) Clever parrots. The teacher shows a flashcard and names what is on it (teacher may say a different word deliberately). Students should repeat the word if it matches the flashcard and keep quiet if it doesn’t. Eliminate the students who have made a mistake. The last student who is left is the winner.

3) Fast Train Bomb. Put students in a circle and start a bomb timer, show a flashcard, name it and send it round the circle. While the bomb is ticking, students pass round a flashcard and repeat the word on it. Students as a team get a point for each flashcard which returns to the teacher before the bomb explodes.

Unscramble the words as stated above is a puzzle. How can we turn it into a game?

Print out the words from your Unscramble the words exercise on separate stripes of paper and put them on the walls around your classroom. Divide your students in pairs where one student is a writer and another is a runner. The runner looks for the words, comes back to the writer and spells the words. The first pair to spell 5 correct words is the winner.

Make true sentences about yourself.

Basketball. Place a line of flashcards on the floor and a basket far away. To shoot the basket from far away is hard, so students need to say a sentence with the word from the card and make their way closer and closer to the basket. When they feel comfortable throwing and hitting the basket, they make their attempt. If they make a mistake, they throw the ball standing next to the last flashcard where they produced a correct sentence. Give one point for each successful hit.

Comprehension check questions after the text.

The teacher cuts a worksheet with questions to the text into stripes (one stripe- one question) and puts them on the blackboard/desk. Students in turns pick up a question and answer it. If they answer it correctly, they get a point. If they make a mistake a point is taken from them. The question they couldn’t answer is put back.

After each round let students go back to the texts and read them once again. Set a time limit. With each round give less time for reading the texts.

As you see, any coursebook exercise can be turned into an exciting game or activity. After some practice you’ll be able to come up with dozens of games at the click of a finger and become the teacher over 9000 level!

We started our introduction of gamification with the basics — PBL, which stand for points, badges and leaderboard. In the first article we talked in detail why points are better than school marks and how to build a leaderboard which will motivate not only the top students, but also those at the bottom. And we said a few words about narrative which should be added to any PBL framework to give epic meaning to the lessons and not to turn gamification into a meaningless points accumulation.

Extrinsic motivation vs Intrinsic motivation

When we introduced PBL framework to our lessons in my language school, there came immediate results! Students were so much involved; they even started asking for extra assignments if they had missed a lesson, which was a complete shock for us.

In 3 months we understood that points-badges-leaderboard give short-term motivation. On one hand, students focused on earning points, but not on the language learning. Some of them even tried to cheat to get more points. On the other hand, students’ motivation started to decrease, because when you are paid for something you stop enjoying it. We, just as many other people, misunderstood the concept of gamification and believed that awarding points and badges is gamification.

We realized that points and badges are a good thing to start, but one shouldn’t stop here. PBL gives extrinsic motivation but we want to awaken students’ intrinsic motivation.

Daniel Pink in his book Drive talks about three intrinsic motivators: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. How can we use this concept for educational and gamification purposes?

Purpose

Teenage students don’t see any point in learning 10 new words or Present Continuous. But they are easily engaged by an interesting story. People like stories, a good narrative is why people go to the movies, read books and play computer games. This is why it is very important to put your students in the context of a story. You can be looking for an exit out of a haunted house, fight with zombies or vampires, fly to far-away planets to save the human race.

One of the most important things is to come up with a hero in your story. Of course, your students, as players, can perform this role. Or which is better, you create a character, who your students want to help. All people are heroes inside themselves; so let your students reveal their inner heroes and give them Purpose.

Autonomy

Engaging games, which keep players playing for hours, do not keep players’ interest by simply offering the ability to earn points and beat levels. What makes the game addictive? Sid Meier, the author of world-famous Civilization, defines the game as a series of interesting decisions. In games a player feels control over the game and makes meaningful choices. In the classroom, unfortunately, students don’t have too much Autonomy. Who makes decisions what to do next in the traditional classroom? More frequently it is the teacher.

In traditional methodology we must start our lesson with the presentation phase, where we introduce the words, which is followed by the practice phase, where students use the language in a controlled way, and we wind up the lesson with the production phase, where we focus on fluency. Can we give our students more autonomy and let them decide which phase they want to start with?

Example

Let’s take A2 students and the target language Accessories (belt, tie, purse, etc). First, let’s wrap the lesson into a gamified framework. Our students are secret agents looking for an evil genius, Alex. They get a message, that Alex can be caught at the Fashion show.

Second, each phase of the lesson will be assigned to a game location. Fashion Experts school is the first phase — presentation. So, before our secret agents go to the Fashion show, they need to study everything about fashion in the Fashion Experts school (presentation of new words).

Shops will be the practice phase. Students go to the shops to do oral and written exercises to practise new words, but they can’t go there without a shopping list where they must write down 12 active vocabulary words.

Fashion show is the production phase. Students turn up at the Fashion show elegantly dressed up and to pass the face control at the entrance they must be able to describe their outfit naming all accessories they are wearing.

If we want our students to feel control over the game, we must let them choose where they start. They can start with the Fashion show. But they will definitely fail as they won’t be able to pass the face control. Or they can start with the shops. And if they are able to make a shopping list, that means that they don’t need the first location, Fashion Experts School, as they are already familiar with the vocabulary. If they fail with the shopping list, they go to the first location — Fashion Experts School.

In the game Haunted House, which we made to practise the Past Simple and the vocabulary on accidents, students walk around the house in any direction they like, which means they can do any vocabulary tasks in any order. But they can’t open some doors unless they demonstrate proper knowledge of the target language. If they take up the task and fail, they can go to the first aid kit, which is a picture dictionary, spend some time on learning new material through matching activities. When they feel they are ready, they get back to the tasks in the Haunted House. When students fail and go to the first aid kit their motivation to study new words is much higher, than when a teacher tells them: “You should study these 7 words to complete the task.”

Mastery

In video games players learn when they fail. So, let your students fail. And let them fail safely, without any penalty. Let your students have unlimited attempts for Mastery.

At my lessons students are allowed to choose one and the same activity several times, leveling up their mastery level. When, as a teacher, I feel that they have achieved the top mastery level I close this activity and they can’t do it again. Students aren’t likely to repeat one and the same exercise again and again. But if you transform it into a game they will be happy to replay it.

Here is one of the examples how you can practice new vocabulary or grammar with unlimited number of attempts.

Caves

At my classes vocabulary and grammar lessons have a special stage which we call Caves. The term goes back to one of the first games where students were looking for gold in caves on an isolated island.

At this stage students practise new words or grammar structures in pairs. The role of the teacher is just to facilitate the process. The teacher puts on the table tasks for Caves — written or oral exercises. Only tasks, which students can check by keys are used for Caves. Each task has its own level of difficulty, i.e. how many points you can earn when you complete the task. The level is marked on the title page by different number of asterisks: 1 asterisk for the easiest, 3 asterisks for the most difficult. Each task should be done by two students. But only the student with the biggest number of correct answers gets points.

Students decide which task to take up taking into account the level of difficulty and the person they want to choose as a competitor. It is important to play 2 or more rounds so that students could think about their strategy. “This student is very strong, I don’t want to compete with him”.

Don’t worry if a student chooses one and the same task several times. At this stage we are focused on teaching and not testing. This is how he or she masters his/her skill. In the first round the student can do only 2 out of 10 sentences correctly. In the second round with the same task his result will become better.

How we organize the work with the Caves

· Write done the number and page of an exercise, each on a separate piece of paper.

· On the reverse side draw 1 asterisk for an easy task, 2 — for more difficult, 3 — for the most difficult.

· Put the papers on the table with asterisks facing up.

· Write down the keys for corresponding tasks and place them under the papers with asterisks.

· Announce the first round.

· Ask students to decide which task they want to do. Stress the idea that only 2 students can do each task.

· Students make their choices and put on the task they are going to do a game piece or any other small item, which will represent them.

· Give students a minute and a half to do the tasks in pairs.

· When the time is up, everybody should stop, put down his or her pen. Students swap their papers and check their partners’ works.

· The person in the pair with the most points wins and gets the points indicated on the paper.

· Go for the second round.

You can work as described above using any coursebook and exercises and tasks from it. You can go further and turn exercises and activities into mini-games and wrap them into a story. E.g. students should fight with cyborgs. Cyborgs are too strong, so two students must attack one cyborg and only one wins.

In my opinion, gamification and game-based learning are the future of education. According to the Atlas of emerging jobs traditional school teachers will be replaced by game educators, specialists “in the development of educational programmes based on game techniques” by 2020. So, learn how to gamify your lessons to be in-demand teacher in the future.

By Elena Peresada

to be continued

As a teacher and a mother of a 14-year-old son every day I witness the struggle between traditional education and millennial teens born in the early 2000s.

My son spends hours playing Kerbal Space. It is a computer game where your goal is to build a spaceship capable of carrying its crew into space without killing them. The game is very realistic — you have to apply your knowledge of physics and mathematics to succeed. It took him 2 years to make the first successful launch.

But when it’s time to do his homework on physics or mathematics he finds thousands of excuses not to do it.

One of the most popular Youtube bloggers is PewDiePie. His audience is more than 36 million people. In his videos he comments on the way you can play a computer game in a fun way and millions of people follow him. My son watches his channel in English for hours but when I ask him to listen to an audio for his English class he is reluc- tant.

My son is just one of his kind. Millions of modern teens have similar interests, spend most of their time online and find school physics and English classes boring. As a teacher of teens I face this challenge every day. Can I create an edu- cational programme for my students that easily competes with a wide range of engaging computer games and online services?

These days more and more teachers have started using computer games at their English lessons. But there is some- thing really wrong in the way digital games are used for ELT. Quite often a teacher cannot see a big difference between us- ing videos, computer games or other images. Digital games are used only as a stimulus for further speaking or writing practice, while the traditional framework of the lesson re- mains unchanged.

Students play fun video games and then they stop and get an assignment and have to write a composition about the game they have played. Wouldn’t that be frustrating for them?

We shouldn’t use games only as rewards (do all the tasks and then we can play a game at the end of the class), warmers, time-fillers and media. We need to redesign the whole lesson and make it similar to computer games in structure. If we want to engage modern students, we should move to an absolutely new pedagogical approach based on game-design principles.

I’m a firm believer that the next step in ELT must be applying gamification to our lessons.

WHAT IS GAMIFICATION?

Gamification has become a buzzword recently. Many educational and business institutes already use gamification to increase motivation: Khan Academy, ClassDojo, Classcraft, Ribbon Hero, DuoLingo, Zombies Run and many more. The official definition of gamification is the use of

game mechanics and game elements in a non-game context. It helps to change people’s behavior and adds a playful spirit to some boring and routine things.

Gamification in our mind is closely connected with technology. But examples of gamification can also be found offline. There is an example of offline gamification in the Manchester Museum of Football. The biggest problem in public toilets for men is to keep the toilet bowl clean. In order to motivate men to aim accurately, they put a small soccer goal with a small ball right into the toilet bowl. When men use the toilet they try to score a goal. The objective of the museum was to change men’s behavior and help them keep the toilet clean. It was achieved by means of gamifica- tion.

GAMIFICATION OF AN ENGLISH CLASS

Looking at a range of successful examples of gamification, I came up with the idea to use gamification at my language school. We decided to do it completely offline and without technology. My idea was to explore if we can apply game principles to English lessons.

In this and the following articles, I’d like to share my 4-year experience of how to gamify your English class offline.

Gamification framework can be presented in the form of a three-layer pyramid, where the first layer includes game elements: XP (experience points), leaderboards, badges, progress bars, etc., the second layer includes game mechanics and the top of the pyramid is an exciting story. Not all games have all these elements; you can choose which ones you want to introduce to your game. Today we’ll talk about the lowest level, game elements.

PBL (Points, badges, levels)

When people hear the word gamification the first thing that comes to mind are points that you earn, badges and levels.

What is an experience point (XP)? It is a unit of measurement that shows a player’s progression through the game. Points are received for the completion of various quests and overcoming challenges. A lot of gamified services specialize in adding points and leveling up. Unfortunately, this leads to people thinking that gamification is very shallow. It is a mistake to think that adding points and levels will automatically make a boring experience fun and more effective. This is not true. People don’t play games to earn points. Points are essential elements but the opportunities to overcome obstacles and to face challenges motivate players much more. So, it’s more important to decide how, when and why you introduce points, badges and levels.

Before you choose what type of points and badges you want to use in your gamification framework, think of your students and what behavior change you want from them.

Before you start to implement gamification choose one metric you want to improve. E.g. I want my students to do their homework and be in class on time. If you have a number of things you want to improve, prioritize them and start with the top one.

Before you start gamification think about your students’ profiles. What are your students’ needs and pain points? Which elements suit your gamification framework? If your students require rewards, add XPs. If your students care about their status, add levels. If they like socializing and are altruistic, add gifting and charity.

POINTS AND ENGLISH CLASS

At first sight, points look very similar to school grades. So, why would they work any better? Points are almost always positive. If your mark is “2,” you can’t be proud of it. But if you get only 1 or 2 points for your work you can see your progress. And next time you’ll do your best to earn some more points.

In games we receive immediate feedback. As soon as you get a reward, your brain releases dopamine. Dopamine is an organic chemical responsible for predicting pleasure. When your student does a grammar exercise correctly and gets 3 points for it, dopamine is released and serves as a trigger for another action. Your student is eager to start another exercise as soon as possible to get more points. Thus, an engagement loop is formed. If you delay giving a reward and say “I’ll check your exercises and tell you your results next class,” the dopamine level in the blood drops and your student loses motivation.

Another thing to think over is whether your points are absolute or you differentiate (e.g., for grammar tasks you give blue points, for vocabulary tasks — red points, etc.)? In one of our games “Island”, where our students had to survive on a deserted island, they earned different points: food — for homework, water — for vocabulary tasks, wood — for grammar, etc. This diversion encouraged our students to pay more attention to tasks where they had problems. They saw that they didn’t have enough food to stay alive or didn’t have enough wood to make a fire at night. So, they worked harder and did more tasks in the area where they needed extra practice.

LEADERBOARD

All students can be ranked basing on the number of points they have. The visualization of this ranking system is called leaderboard. The first game we made at my school was “Space Journey”. As our groups consisted mostly of achievers, students who were keen on earning points, we decided to start with points and levels. For each correct answer, students earned a small piece of cardboard with a picture of a spaceship on it. At the end of each lesson we calculated the number of points each student had and built a leaderboard. There were some students at the top of the leaderboard, and some students were at the bottom. Those at the bottom knew that they would never beat the leaders. That’s why the leaderboard was divided into several segments and they were named after military ranks: privates, captains, and generals. If a student was in the segment “privates” he knew he would never become a general, but at the same time he understood that he could easily beat at least those two steps above him and become a captain. And this added loads of motivation.

STORY

Everybody likes good narratives. Before you introduce points and levels and badges, frame your lessons into an interesting story. For example, you can be looking for an exit out of a haunted house, fight with zombies or fly to faraway planets. Always try to think about something epic. People believe that they have hidden heroes inside. Your game metaphor must help to reveal their hidden hero. Walking through a magic forest is very weak. But walking through a magic forest to find an artifact, which will save the world from the evil magic, is much stronger.

RESULTS

The first months of gamification experiment changed our classes dramatically. All my students started working hard and even asked for extra assignments. Many of the weaker students gained confidence and improved their performance. Their parents were happy as well since students were highly motivated to do their English homework. So, we decided to continue and introduce the next layers of gamification framework.

By Elena Peresada

to be continued

At StudyCraft we give more freedom to our students. Here is one of the examples how you can practice new vocabulary or grammar.

“Caves”

Vocabulary and grammar lessons have a special stage which we call caves. The term goes back to one of StudyCraft first games where students were looking for gold in caves on an isolated island.

At this stage students practise new words or grammar structures in pairs. The role of the teacher is just to facilitate the process. The teacher puts on the table tasks for Caves — written or oral exercises. Only tasks, which students can check by keys, are used for Caves. Each task has its own level of difficulty, i.e. how many points you can earn when you complete the task. The level is marked on the title page by a different number of asterisks: 1 asterisk for the easiest, 3 asterisks for the most difficult. Each task should be done by two students. But only the student with the biggest number of correct answers gets points. Students decide which task to take up taking into account the level of difficulty and the person they want to choose as a competitor. It is important to play 2 or more rounds so that students can think about their strategy. “This student is very strong, I don’t want to compete with him”.

Don’t worry if a student chooses one and the same task several times. At this stage we are focused on teaching and not testing. This is how he or she masters his/her skill. In the first round the student can do only 2 out of 10 sentences correctly. In the second round with the same task his result will become better. In traditional educational system students are unlikely to do one and the same exercise again and again. But if you gamify the task they will be happy to replay it.

This is how we organize work with the Caves.

• Write done the number and page of an exercise, each on a separate piece of paper.
• On the reverse side, draw 1 asterisk for an easy task, 2 — for more difficult, 3 — for the most difficult.
• Put the papers on the table with asterisks facing up.
• Write down the keys for corresponding tasks and place them under the papers with asterisks.
• Announce the first round.
• Ask students to decide which task they want to do. Stress the idea that only 2 students can do each task.
• Students make their choices and put on the task they are going to do a game piece or any other small item, which will represent them.
• Give students a minute and a half to do the tasks in pairs.
• When the time is up, everybody should stop, put down his or her pen. Students swap their papers and check their partners’ works.
• The person in the pair with the biggest number of correct answers wins the points indicated.
• Go for the second round.

They don’t listen to you carefully because they opt for chating with their friends in social networks on their mobiles. They don’t do their homework because they prefer playing computer games to studying. They think that exercises in course books are boring. They don’t want to work hard. All they want is to have fun.

Teachers all around the world are trying to find new approaches to teaching the millennial generation. One of them is gamification.

Gamification is the use of game thinking and game mechanics in non-game contexts. Many educational and business institutes already use gamification to increase motivation: Khan Academy, ClassDojo, Classcraft, Ribbon Hero, DuoLingo. As you see, all examples are online services or apps. So, gamification in our mind is closely connected with technology.

In our school we started experimenting with gamification 3 years ago. But we decided to do it completely offline and without technology.

In this article I’d like to share my experience of how to gamify your English class offline and tell you how to introduce elements and mechanics of computer games to increase students’ motivation.

To understand how to gamify our class, we need to realize what elements of computer games make them so interesting?

One of the key elements in any game is an exciting story. Other elements include XP (experience points), leaderboards, badges, progress bars, etc. Not all games have all these elements, you can choose which ones you want to introduce into your game.

PBL (Points, badges, levels)

At first sight, XPpoints look very similar to school grades. So, why do they work better? What motivates an average student to do an assignment? Unfortunately, more often it is not his or her desire for knowledge but a fear of punishment. When you give your student F for an assignment it is very disappointing and discouraging. But if you give him some points to reward, at least, for the completion of one exercise, his brain will release dopamine (a chemical which makes us feel good), which will motivate him for another try.

Our first game was Space Journey. So, what we used in our first game.

For each correct answer students earned a small piece of cardboard with a picture of a spaceship on it. At the end of each lesson we calculated the number of points each student had and built a leaderboard. There were some students at the top of the leaderboard, some students were closer to the bottom. Those at the bottom knew that they would never beat the leaders, but at the same time they understood that they could easily beat at least those two steps above them. And this added motivation.

To visualize the progress of the group we used a Lego spaceship. At the end of the class the group could buy 1 piece of Lego which cost 5 points. The students could start their space journey when the ship is ready.

And we introduced different badges to mark students achievements.

There came immediate results! Students were so much involved, they even started asking for extra assignments if they missed a lesson which was a complete surprise for us.

After 3 months we understood that PBL (points-badges-leaderboard) gives short-term motivation. When you are being paid for something you stop enjoying it. We, just as many other people, misunderstood the concept of gamification and believed that awarding points and badges is gamification.

Introducing Game Mechanics.

Points and badges are a good thing to start, but you shouldn’t stop here.

Engaging games, which keep players playing for hours, do not maintain players’ interest by simply offering the ability to earn points and beat levels. What makes the game addictive is a good story, chances for players, challenges, and choices.

The most challenging task for us was to introduce freedom of choice to our English class. How can we apply freedom of choice with PPP approach?

In traditional methodology a teacher should start with a presentation of new words or grammar. Can we skip this stage and go to practice? In video games players learn when they fail. So, we offer our students a number of quests and a first aid kit (grammar or new words presentation). They choose whether they want to start with the quest (an exercise or a game/activity) or a first aid kit. If they start with the task and fail, they can go to the first aid kit, spend some time on learning new material and then get back to quests. When students fail and go to the first aid kit their motivation to study new words is much higher, than when a teacher tells them: “You should study these 7 words to complete the task.”

In video games a player wants to take control over the game. So this is how our students make their own meaningful choice. We give them a number of quests. Each quest has its own level of difficulty and price, i.e. how many points you can earn if complete the quest. Each quest should be done by two students. But only the student with the biggest number of correct answers gets points. Students decide which quest to take up taking into account the level of difficulty and the person they want to choose as a competitor. You can plan your strategy: “This student is very strong, I don’t want to compete with him”.

You can work as I described above, using any coursebook. In this case quests are exercises and tasks from your coursebook. You can go further and turn exercises and activities into mini-games. But please keep in mind that an interactive activity is not a real game. If you do an activity ‘Find someone who…’, think about how a student can win in it. For example, you can set a time limit and the person who can find more people with a certain characteristic is the winner.

Dynamics.

People like stories. A good narrative is why people go to the movies, read books and play computer games. This is why it is very important to put your students in the context of a story. You can be looking for an exit out of a haunted house, fight with zombies or vampires, fly to far-away planets. You can do a gap-filling exercise in the bathroom with a broken tap. With each mistake the water level goes up and you can get drowned. Or you can kill wicked irregular verb mosquitoes.

Now to add more esthetics we make card board games for every unit. I am sure that in the future if a students wants to complete level A2, for example, he will need to play 10 or 12 games and pass a Boss fight to receive a certificate.

Elena Peresada, StudyCraft methodology author