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Hromek, R., & Roffey, S. (2009). Promoting Social and Emotional Learning With Games: “It’s fun and we learn things”. Simulation gaming, 40. pp 626 - 644. Retrieved from https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/32955715/2009_Hromek___Roffey_Games.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1545097139&Signature=%2Boz0QXCOSSj29O6%2F%2BrHjE0vqshs%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DPromoting_Social_and_Emotional_Learning.pdf

MacIntyre, P. & Mercer, S. (2014). Introducing positive psychology to SLA. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching. Vol 4, No 2. Retrieved from:  https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/ssllt/article/view/3938/3987

Roffey, S. (2008). Emotional literacy and the ecology of school well-being. Educational and Child Psychology, 25(2), pp. 29-39.

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What should you do if you lose your plane tickets?

What would you do if you find someone's passport in the street?

Where should you go if you get lost in some place?

Tell a funny story that happened in your last trip

When should you go the embassy of the country of destination?

Why would someone tell you not to take pictures in a museum?

What could you do if you get lost? (Survival stuff)

If you have travelled, how did you planned your journey?

Could you live in another country for the rest of your life?

Why do you think people travel?

If you could choose one place to go this weekend, where would it be?

What are some countries that you would never visit? Why?

Would you like to take a cruise? Where to? With who?

Pink spaces:

Move ahead 2 spaces

Lose turn

Go back 3 spaces

Switch places with your partner

Jump on one leg until your next turn

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As pre-service teachers, we have been taught in these years at university about the importance of lowering students’ affective filter, creating the best environment for learning to take place, reducing learners’ anxiety, motivating learners towards the subject we are teaching and so on. However, we had not been given before the opportunity to put all this knowledge into practice and apply it in an interactive and purposeful way, as it was with a game. In different opportunities, we learned about authentic materials, how to use songs or movies into the English classroom, but we did not acknowledge that games could also be useful tools to exploit in the learning of English.

The factors mentioned above are crucial at the moment of teaching a foreign language, especially because most students do not feel comfortable or proficient enough in the foreign language. Thus, EFL teachers need to provide students with all the possible elements that will contribute to a meaningful, long-term and stress-free learning experience. This is exactly what positive psychology fosters teachers to implement in their classrooms, and MacIntyre and Mercer (2014:156) explain the dynamic of language learning classrooms as the following:

“Many language educators are aware of the importance of improving individual learners’ experiences of language learning by helping them to develop and maintain their motivation, perseverance, and resiliency, as well as positive emotions necessary for the long-term undertaking of learning a foreign language. In addition, teachers also widely recognise the vital role played by positive classroom dynamics amongst learners and teachers, especially in settings in which communication and personally meaningful interactions are foregrounded.”

Therefore, when we created the game, we thought that it was necessary to include the suggestions based on positive psychology to obtain positive results from our students. It is very common to encounter anxious students who are neither accurate nor fluent when using a second language probably due to distressing experiences with language learning. That is why to solve this problem, our game tried to evoke responses in which students unconsciously made use of vocabulary from a specific unit and modal verbs. The main purpose of this game was to help students overcome the stress that speaking tests provoke, by showing them that they have enough linguistic knowledge to speak in English and that a positive state of mind can significantly help them to obtain better results.

Furthermore, in our board game we focused on fostering social and emotional learning an this means that it may focus not only on the acquisition of knowledge and skills as in other subject areas, but also in changing or developing values, beliefs, attitudes, and everyday behaviors. SEL is not just about individual well-being but also about the development of healthy relationships and caring communities (Roffey, 2008). Also, by playing the game the students could not only practice the use of certain travel and tourism concepts, or certain grammar points, but also they could enhance the following skills taken out from an exhaustive list proposed by Hromek & Roffey (2009):

knowing how to regulate and express feelings effectively and safely

being able to read and take account of the emotional content of situations

problem-solving skills, especially in the domains of personal coping and interpersonal relationships

being able to negotiate fairly

To summarize, we have always thought that playing games in the classroom was really fun for us, as teachers, and for the students, but now we have realized thanks to this course that games have more aims that only having fun. Due to their stress-free feature, games promote social learning as well as emotional learning while at the same time focusing on the content and grammar point the students need to practice.

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The game was initially created for pre-intermediate English students from the PUCV, to put into practice their knowledge about the topic of ‘Travel and Tourism’ and the use of modal verbs while playing, since the game was an instance for them to revise these contents before their finals. However, due to unexpected events, the game ended up being applied to students with a higher proficiency level of English. This situation led us to some surprises, for example, the game was easier for these players than we expected and also since we applied the game to two people only it took them just five minutes to reach ‘finish’. The game could have taken longer if it had been applied to 4 people onwards.

Another unforeseen situation was that we did not print the instructions for the game, so the players asked us in different occasions how to play; that is why we think that we should have not taken for granted that instructions whether we find the game easy or not. In addition, we received some feedback from the players in terms of the questions and language used for the game, and it was noted that some questions had a few grammar mistakes that we passed by, and also that there were some confusing questions that we had to fix.

During the game, we could notice that although these players had a higher proficiency level in the language, they avoided the use of modal verbs; moreover, they limited their range of modal verbs to the use of ‘would’ in most cases and just once the use of ‘should’. What we can conclude about this issue is that even though students had the vocabulary knowledge to answer the questions and were accurate and fluent in their responses, they did not know use other modal verbs because they were not explicitly told that. In the beginning, we thought that explicit instructions about the use of modal verbs were not necessary because the questions we created prompted students to use modal verbs; however, as the questions were mainly written with ‘would’ in it, students use it as it was the fastest word to come to their minds. Thus, we think it would be useful to add some prompts to the questions such as ‘use two different modal verbs’ or ‘use might or probably’ in this question, etc. so that students focus on these lexical items and use them consciously.

Finally, once the game was over we reflected about whether the learning aims of our game were accomplished or not, and as stated before, students were able to express and communicate their personal experiences and feelings in the questions and were able to use vocabulary from the topic as they were advanced learners and their vocabulary had a wider range. Nonetheless, the learning aim that was not completely achieved was the use of modal verbs because even though the players used some modal verbs, they did not use most of them in their answers as we expected.

All things considered, this game experience was very fruitful for us as future EFL teachers because we could see how much students appreciate experiences like this. Our players were relaxed and happy to be playing, besides, their affective filter was lower as they were enjoying the game so they were not anxious to speak in English and this made them more fluent and even more accurate when speaking.

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Instructions:

Number of players: 3 - 6

1. Roll the dice to decide the order of the players. The player with the higher number starts first.

2. Roll the dice again and move your piece according to the number.

3. Answer the question or do what the space in which you landed says.

4. Try to use modal verbs when answering the questions.

5. Pass the turn to your partner.

6. Repeat the steps.

7. The first player to reach ‘Finish’ is the winner.

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Learning aims:

Students will be able to…

use modal verbs when answering questions.

apply vocabulary from the unit ‘travel and tourism’.

express their feelings and personal experiences.