Monthly Archives: April 2011

10 Websites to source online games

Here’s a brief description of ten online gaming sites that have a range of possible games to adapt for use in the EFL classroom.  All these games were chosen because they are free, easily accessible, engaging and easily adaptable.  With each link there is a brief description and some advice on how to adapt the game [...]

Escape the (Plush) Room

Level: Primary Location: Computer room Language Focus: Receptive – There is/ are, prepositions of place.  Productive – Short answers (Yes, I can/have etc) Game: Escape the Plush room Situation My class was pretty proficient with most of language structures I used within the live listening dictation I scripted for this activity (including prepositions of place, [...]

Another Interactive Text Adventure : Spent

As Chris Roland showed us with Inanimate Alice (Part I & Part II), there is a lot of scope for language learning and teaching in Interactive fiction. Spent is a very different type of text adventure. It’s not interactive fiction – firstly, because it deals with a very serious subject : poverty. It is also [...]

Game Tester Job

Learners watch a short video on game testers and then write a job application to be a game tester. Level: Upper intermediate Location: Connected classroom/ Home Language focus:  Vocabulary of games / Formal language in an application letter Skills Practice: Listening / Reading / Writing Maybe you have looked at formal language for writing a [...]

All About Alice – Chapter 1

We are pleased and honoured that a colleague of ours, Chris Roland, has written our second guest post, all about Inanimate Alice, an engaging digital fiction project for learners. What is Inanimate Alice? The best thing to do, in all honesty, is to go to the Inanimate Alice website yourself, load up one of the [...]

All About Alice – Chapter 2

Last week I told you about Inanimate Alice.  This week I’d like to tell you about how I’ve used IA in my classes. Can you give me an example of a specific activity you do with IA? Sure. So a clearly defined task, teacher monitoring and evaluation are paramount. With this in mind I divide [...]