Terror for Teens

By kylemawer 　



Level: Upper Intermediate

Location: Computer room

Skills Focus: Reading

Game: The Cave

A scary point and click game for a more mature audience in a run up to Halloween.  Based on a horror film of the same name.  Also has extra resonance with recent events in Chile with the 33 miners.

Preparation

  1. Write ‘The Cave’ on the board and tell the class it’s a horror story.  Ask them to discuss in pairs what they think happens.
  2. While they are discussing this write the following words on the board – flashlight, compass, map, batteries, revolver, bullets, rope, ascender, harness, dynamite, CO2 cylinder, scuba gear.
  3. Ask learners to copy down the words they don’t know and see if anyone can tell them what they mean.  You can either describe what they are or give them dictionaries to look it up.
  4. Tell them the objects are listed in the order they were used by someone trapped in a cave to escape.  Students predict how they were used and why.

Play

  1. Learners open up two internet explorer pages.
  2. On one page they play the game.  On the other page they read the diary of the sole survivor.  They use the diary entries to help them follow the survivors escape and to repeat it themselves.
  3. If the sound effects are proving too much of a distraction learners can a) reduce the volume b) wear headphones or c) turn the volume off.
  4. If the monster in the page catches them they can restart the game from the research table.

Post Play

  • You could download a copy of the diary for each pair in the class and focus on the language.  Use of tenses, identifying what each case of ‘it’ means, and maybe looking at expanding the text to make it more atmospheric.
  • Learners could write a newspaper report on the event.
This entry was written by kylemawer, posted on October 22, 2010 at 10:40 am, filed under All Posts, Game Plan and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Comments are closed, but you can leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

2 Comments

  1. kylemawer
    Posted October 22, 2010 at 6:06 pm | Permalink

    After trying this with a class I found that I had to constantly monitor to make sure they were using the diary as a guide. The next class I told them to tick the parts of the diary as they completed it. Any other suggestions to keep learners on language rather than purely playing the game are welcome.

  2. kylemawer
    Posted October 26, 2010 at 10:25 pm | Permalink

    Thanks for the mention. Nice article too – even though I’m a little biased. :)

2 Trackbacks

  1. By Tweets that mention Terror for Teens – Digital Play -- Topsy.com on October 22, 2010 at 12:33 pm

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Shelly S Terrell, dbertolucci. dbertolucci said: RT @ShellTerrell: #elearning #esl Terror for Teens http://bit.ly/cMQT4y via @eltdigitalplay [...]

  2. By Walking Through Caves « ESL Technology.com on October 26, 2010 at 7:20 pm

    [...] game that was created for a Sony Pictures movie back in 2005.  I came across it on a recent timely post on Digital Play — just in time for Halloween and just after 33 miners were rescued from a mining collapse in [...]