Stage 07 is a fun and engaging adventure game where you play the part of young woman called Ms Webb who is on an assignment for her job.  As you play the game you begin to understand that things are not as simple as they at first appear.  At the heart of the game there is a mystery that unfolds as you journey to different locations and talk to different in-game characters.

The main reason I like this game is that you can listen to the characters speak while reading what they say in the speech bubbles.  This provides learners with some nice listening and reading practice.  The dialogue is delivered a little slower than natural speech but this is probably a good thing when using it with English language learners.

This game is also a favourite of mine because you have to engage with the language content.  At times you will start a conversation with someone and you will then be given a choice of possible things you could say.  Depending on what you decide to say affects how the story of the game unfolds.  This provides some great opportunities to discuss in open class what you should say and why.  Then, once the decisions have been made and the dialogue in the game has been completed, you can discuss how good or effective the choices were.

I’ve used this game in both the classroom, presenting the game to the whole class on one computer, and a computer room, with learners playing the game in pairs.  In the latter, I simply get learners to open 3 internet explorer windows for the game, the walkthrough and an online dictionary.  Either way you use the game it definitely helps if you have a copy of the stage 07 walkthrough to hand.  I also found it useful to play the game myself before using it with the class.  There’s one point where the character is walking round the streets and has to talk a couple of times to a man on a bench.  If I hadn’t played the game before nor had I had the walkthrough I think the game would have ground to a halt here.

As we played the game I would ask ‘wh’ questions to ensure learners both understood what was happening, to guide them along the lines of the walkthrough and also just to generate language.  Common questions would be:

“Who is this person?” and “How do you think they can help us?” The singular use of ‘they’ proved of interest to some learners.

“What do we know so far?” and “Where do we do next?” An opportunity to recap on and then predict the storyline

Generally if I play the game using the walkthrough I don’t have to think about much other than language issues.  This can be as simple as just helping learners to reach a greater understanding of the game or/and, as opportunities arise, to recycle grammar and vocabulary we’ve covered in the term.

Play the Stage 07 game

Read the walkthrough

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 primarily composed of written text, unlike Inanimate Alice.

Here’s a handout for Advanced students to support the game in class (If you prefer, you can download a printable version here)

http://playspent.org/ is an online game that hopes to raise awareness about what it’s like to be extremely poor in the USA.

Before playing the game, let’s look at the premise of the game.

A) Before playing

1) What do you think will be the most difficult problems of your month of poverty? How will you solve them?

2) Find expressions in the text above that mean the same as these:

• the condition of being extremely poor
• a building protecting you from danger or bad weather
• less than the minimum level of income necessary for an adequate standard of living
• not having enough money or food
• own very little or have little money

B) While playing

Now let’s play the game. While playing, tick any of the following words and phrases that are used during the game. If you don’t last a month, try playing again and changing your choices.

C) After playing

1) How do you feel about your answer to question A 1) – were your predictions right?

2) Which of the words and phrases did you come across while playing? Do you remember how they were used and what they mean? Try to explain the meaning to your partner using other words

Answers

A) Before playing

2) Expressions

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 episodes and have a look. If you ask me for a description in words I’d say something like: the Inanimate Alice stories are digital readers, combining text, images, sound and interaction to take you with Alice on a number of her adventures as she moves round the world with her parents. But it’s more than that. The overall effect of IA certainly adds up to more than the sum of its parts. The screen’s all black, the text flickers with static audio or dark drum n’ bass style rhythms that exacerbate the tension, very real photo images and the hard edges of architecturally precise building plans contrast with childish doodles and musings. As you can see, talking about IA is quite fun, especially as it blurs the line between various medium types, between the reader/viewer paradigm and when used in a language classroom, between text as vehicle for language and text as vehicle for story for its own sake.

Who wrote it?

Inanimate Alice is the brainchild of Ian Harper. He enlisted crack digital artist Chris Joseph to give the story the powerful screen presence you see and novelist Kate Pullinger to put words into Alice’s mouth. Ian’s vision for Alice is really something and goes far beyond the four episodes you can currently find on the site. There are 10 planned instalments and a number of possible projects that may branch off those too. One nice touch is that in each of the episodes, Alice is a little older, so we’re actually watching her grow up as the episodes progress. She begins as an eight year old girl with an interest in gadgets, imaginary characters and stories. As far as I know she will become a successful fashion designer, but we’ll have to see what surprises Ian has in store for us there.

So who are you?

Good question. I’m an English teacher, teacher trainer and materials writer. I got involved in the project a couple of years ago and have written the blueprint for an adapted ELT version of the first episode ‘China’ consisting of 3 separate graded versions, for Pre-Intermediate (A2), Intermediate (B1) and Upper Intermediate (B2) which include graded language, specific exam practice, language games and extra features like scoring and dictionary functions – all designed to increase the effectiveness of IA in the CALL room. As I say, this is a blueprint and there are no fully working versions of ELT Inanimate Alice at the moment. I’m also one of the moderators on the Inanimate Alice Facebook page, set up by Laura Flemming.

Does IA have a place in the traditional English classroom?

I think so. Have a look at this:

You may look at this photo and wonder what it has to do with a state of the art digital literacy programme like Inanimate Alice. Well, featured in the picture is a group of 20 Spanish secondary state school teachers on an intensive teacher training course that I gave at the British Council in July of last year. The course was provided by the Council for the Ministry of Educational of Catalonia and I called it ‘Getting the most out of your materials.’ In the photo we are busy preparing paper based visuals for conversation activities, cutting and pasting from magazines in the old fashioned way.

The point I’d like to make with this is that blended learning packages and digital resources can co-exist quite comfortably with more traditional teaching methodologies, paradigms and mindsets. On this course we did this cutting and pasting images from weird pseudo-scientific magazines one day and the next my teachers were cutting and pasting from Google Images to simulate student made picture dictionaries on a screen. I would go further and say that given the limited access to computer rooms that many state school teachers experience, and the variety of contexts teachers find themselves in, then more than a question of being able to co-exist, it’s a question of needing to. The day before this picture was taken, the very same teachers you can see here were up in the computer room following Alice’s exploits across China, Italy, Russia and the UK

How can I make sure lessons with Inanimate Alice work?

Many teenage students will seize the opportunity to do something new like go to the computer room and work on Alice with appetite and enthusiasm but a few will seize the same opportunity to test the teacher’s classroom management skills by ‘playing up’. A third category, and perhaps the majority, will be neither overly enthusiastic nor disruptive and their participation will really depend on how tight the teacher’s lesson plan and task design has been. For this reason, when setting up an Inanimate Alice, or any other, activity – be it digital, paper based, spoken groupwork or out of class assignments – my motto is ‘Structure. Structure. Structure’.

Now the first things your average teenager will ask themselves (often on a subconscious level), when given a language learning task in school, are: “What do I have to do? What’s the easiest way to get it done? What will happen if I don’t do the task? Will the teacher know and what will be the consequences? Is there a system of evaluation in place with actual marks (grades) awarded? Are all my friends getting down to work? Are we ‘having’ this as a group?” So what we need is a tangible task for the students with obvious checking points with regards their participation. This is what I call structure for the student.

We also need structure for the teacher. By this I mean that however ‘wow’ an activity, it has to provide the teacher with information such as grades or evidence of task completion or learner production, that they can add to their term grades, records of work or class portfolio.

Next week I’ll tell you about a specific activity you can do with IA.

Chris is based at the British Council Barcelona. He teaches young learners, adults and business classes and gives as many conference sessions as he can on top of his regular contract hours. When he isn’t doing something teaching-related he’s probably training for marathons, walking up hills or shooting billiards. His own site: www.regandlellow.com has powerPoint stories for very young learners, including Reg and Lellow themselves and also Humphrey Bogin. Please take a look!

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 the class into pairs. I feel that three at a single computer is too many. Many schools do not have a terminal for each student however. When students are sharing, I insist that they swap the person controlling the mouse every 5 minutes. Less dominant students will say they don’t mind and cede the mouse to their fellows. They do mind. They want a go on Alice really – and it’s the teacher’s job to see that they get it. So, each pair watches an episode of Alice. The existing episodes of Alice are of unequal length, so I tend to work with either China and Italy together (which are shorter) or Russia and the UK.. The episode each pair watch is specified on their worksheet, which I’m not including in this article because it really is better if each teacher thinks through the exact micro-mechanics of the activity for themselves and produces their own handout accordingly, which will be best suited to their own specific context.

Full instructions are provided on the worksheets to supplement my initial explanation of the task. Students will often ask the teacher rather than refer to their worksheets but some students will read the instructions so I always say it’s worth putting them on. As they watch their episode, each pair write down 10 difficult vocabulary items appearing in the story and afterwards write the definitions of these words on the same worksheet (I allow them to use an online dictionary but the moment I see their own Facebook accounts opened, that’s it, the stack of paper based volumes I have as standby comes into play).

This is the first task. When each group have their vocabulary lists and definitions checked by the teacher they proceed to the second task which is to watch their respective episode again, this time writing down 10 comprehension questions about the episode. For example, those watching China might write: How old is Alice? What colour is the painting that her mum does? What’s the name of that machine she plays with? They also write the answers but this time on a separate sheet. The ‘worksheet’ for this one consists of a paragraph of instructions and the numbers 1-10 in the margin.

Again, each group have their questions checked and receive a group grade. This gives the teacher chance to clear up any ambiguities in their questions. Each member of the pair needs to have their name on each sheet – no name no mark – and the questions need to be written in two different styles of handwriting to show there has been equal participation.

After this each pair swap questions with another pair who have viewed a different episode. This involves having everyone finish as close together as possible and occasionally a quick photocopy of one set of questions may be necessary if there is an odd number of groups and thus more people doing one episode than another. Students then work through the new story, answering their colleagues’ questions using the vocabulary lists produced by the other pair to help them, so each pair is simultaneously teaching and testing, and being taught and tested by the other. Finally the answered questions are returned to their creators for correction and are handed in to the teacher for final marks collection. A lot of work for the teacher? In actual fact, the more individual marks a teacher takes in, the less work they have to do come the end of term evaluation.

Sounds good – how well does it work?

It works beautifully and I like the fact that students play these 4 roles of lexical investigators, analytical question makers, task achievers and solution finders. You can see that there’s a lot of structure here, but this is the type of structure that is needed and appreciated by front line teachers if we are to envisage using materials like Alice alongside regular materials and methodologies. It’s very difficult for any online programme to provide all of this structure by itself, so this is where teachers come in and why their role in an Inanimate Alice class is essential. As you can see, I’m a big fan of what I call ‘micro-mechanics’ – the nitty gritty of task design – and I think it’s on this that a class lives or dies.

Is there anything else I can do to try to make sure things go well?

Whenever we’re dealing with the CALL room, I would advise going in there before the class, turning on all the computers and making sure you have done everything you are going to ask the students to do. That way you will find out if all the terminals are working okay and if everything is loading up fine. It will also prime you for any procedural ‘hitches’ students might encounter. The second thing to do, if you have time, is actually load up each episode on each terminal, so students are ready to go. If not, write up where they go and which episode to watch very clearly on the board – so that they have instructions there and on the handout.

So where’s the play?

Recently I’ve been deconstructing my classroom activities and asking this very question, prompted by the realization that my students often find or introduce a game element into activities that was not what I had imagined they would find fun about it when I planned the things. At recent teaching conferences I’ve been bringing up my little play symbols (made with the help of the aqua ball font at www.flamingtext.com) to help make the point more visual.

Another very useful thing to do during planning is to go through the episodes you are going to work with and script them, actually writing down all the language they contain yourself. This will give you a good idea of what level the language is and help you predict any difficulties your students will have lexically.

My point is that if there isn’t an element of play, students will invent one. They need it to survive. If their ‘play agendas’ can run in parallel to the teacher’s lesson aims then great, they’ll normally be happy with that. But if there’s no other way, their own need for play will come at the teacher’s expense.

In Inanimate Alice, the play starts with clicking. I maintain that IA isn’t something you should show your students – ever. It’s something they should do. Watching somebody else click their way through Alice’s screens in definitely not play. Alice doesn’t work as a class movie. That’s why, as I mentioned above, I make sure that everyone is regularly clicking. The most successful play element of the episodes themselves has to be the doll catching game in the Russia episode. Here, on regular screens, students have to find a hidden doll then catch it as it falls from the top pf the screen, using a little Brad character on a skateboard at the bottom. I always specify that they can play this episode with the game option on. There are also the flower photographing, clothes grabbing and derelict building maze activities in the other episodes but with the dolls, Chris J. has really captured a retro computer game feel which takes me back to the days of the Spectrum 48k or the Commodore 64.

These are elements of play intrinsic to the episodes themselves. Then there is play that the guiding activity gives the opportunity for. Students making up their own questions can allow them the chance to try to catch out and confuse their classmates. If you have few students, then dividing them up and sending them off to work at different computer terminals in different physical locations, different rooms, can provide that element of ‘adventure’. There are also elements of play that involve the students’ imaginations in a positive way. A number of teachers, reporting on the Facebook page, have recently had their students write their own episodes of Alice, or to fill in the blank time periods of Alice’s life in between episodes and this can take a number of formats such as written work, PowerPoint presentations and class video clips of roleplays with students acting out Alice, Brad, Ming (her mum) and John (her dad).

And then of course, there are the elements of play that you will never see coming but that you can observe if you watch carefully. What is it about an activity that seems to animate your students most? Some of these play elements may horrify you; others might provide the inspiration for future activities. Many, many thanks to Kyle and Graham for giving me space here and all the very best to all DP’s readers!

Chris is based at the British Council Barcelona. He teaches young learners, adults and business classes and gives as many conference sessions as he can on top of his regular contract hours. When he isn’t doing something teaching-related he’s probably training for marathons, walking up hills or shooting billiards. His own site: www.regandlellow.com has powerPoint stories for very young learners, including Reg and Lellow themselves and also Humphrey Bogin. Please take a look!

Language: Narrative devices

Skills Focus: Reading or Listening

Location: Computer room or Connected classroom

Game: Adam & Eve

This is a simple point and click game with a simple story and basic repetitive language elements.

Preparation

Either:

Download a copy of Adam & Eve

or use and

Online electronic version of the Adam & Eve story

Be Warned – there are 5 pages.

A lot of simple point and click games have a nice little narrative story running through them. In this case our hero, Adam,  leaves the safety of his cave and heads out on a journey to go and see his girlfriend, Eve. On the way he meets various creatures, faces numerous obstacles and has to solve a few tricky puzzles and all in a day’s work.  I decided to play the game and instead of writing a walkthrough I wrote the story of Adam’s journey to Eve.

I don’t consider myself a great story writer but I thought if I could identify a few rules for writing based on my own experience of what kids generally enjoy reading I could write something that would be enjoyable, understandable, challenging and doable.  What I came up with was this list.  Feel free to suggest any other points in ‘comments’.  I can’t say i’ve identified all the one’s I’ve used nor ones which I’m sure would have made the story better if I’d included them.  Anyway,

• Graded language – that learners understand (colours, prepositions, animals, clothes etc where possible).
• Recycled language – see above (but also prepositions, directions etc)
• Language elements that are higher than the readers language level – to challenge them.
• Repetitive language elements (Particularly at the beginning and end of each stage) – to provide a little structure.
• Some examples of direct speech – for opportunities to put on those theatrical voices.

Once I’d written the story of ‘Adam & Eve’ sI thought about using it in a number of ways:

Writing - That is, a group of learners who I judged would understand the majority of the written text.  Learners read the story and identified nouns.  They then made their own dictionary for the words they identified.  They then took the story and their dictionaries to the computer room where they played the game.  Because there was quite a bit of intensive reading and writing here I divided the complete text into different sections – enough for groups of two learners to work on (writer and researcher) – and also did it with a more mature level of low level language learners learners (mid teens).

Listening – Play the game at the front of the class and read the story and get learners to raise their hand when they identify the part of the story that tells them what to do in the game (how to play it). That learner can then come up and do that action. Repeat part of the story if they get it wrong and continue the story if they get it right. Continue until interest wanes (yours or your learners).

Reading – In the computer room learners play the game using three internet explorer windows.  They have the ‘Adam & Eve’ story open on the first one, an online dictionary/ translator on the second and the game itself is played on the third.  You could think about using an online image search engine (say Google images) but be careful when doing this and make sure you use ‘advance search’ options and set it to ‘strict filter’.  I could regale you with stories of teachers who didn’t and have yet to live it down but I won’t.  Hopefully you won’t be adding to those anecdotes.

Topic:  Murder Mystery

Language skill: Reading & listening

Game: Bow Street Runner

“This game is set in London’s Covent Gardens in the 1750s, and depicts a time when crime and vice in the city had hit such levels that the local magistrates began to introduce the first instances of physical policing of law and order.  BOW STREET RUNNER is designed to be historically accurate, and therefore the game’s content and its settings may not be suitable for younger players.”

This games video scene clips recorded using actors makes this series of interactive murder mystery adventures incredibly engaging, authentic and life like.  You actually feel you are seeing what London was like at the time.  The sound effects can be a little disturbing but add to the dark and sinister atmosphere of the gaming experience.  To pique your interest here’s a little trailer for the game:

While you explore the game looking for clues much in the way you play a standard point and click game there are plenty of opportunities for your learners to get some reading practice in as each clue is annotated with information on how the clue may be relevant to both the case and to how London was in the 1750s.  As you journey through the games playscape you come across various characters from the time who each have something to say regarding the case you are following.  You choose the direction of your enquiries and hear and read (there are subtitles) what each character has to say.  Finally you have to present your evidence to the magistrate by listening to his questions and putting forward the evidence you have built up over the course of your investigation.

How to use it with learners

I think this is very much an autonomous standalone game.  Either treat it as a reading activity in the computer room, where learners may use an online dictionary or you the teacher for language support, or seek to expose your learners to more English outside the classroom by suggesting it for homework.  If you choose the later then it may be a good  idea to introduce them to the game in the computer room.  Whichever option you choose you may also like to think about encouraging your learners to make a note of some of the more interesting / useful language that they come across.

Extra game support

There are 5 episodes in total and you may like to have access to the Bow Street Runners walkthrough for use with your learners in contact time or even give your learners the opportunity to have access to it from outside class time.

Topic:  Jungle adventure

Language skill: Reading and online dictionary work

Game: Hetherdale the game Hetherdale the walkthrough

There is a mystery to solve and its your job as intrepid explorer Dr. Montrose to solve it.  Play the game as you read the story and find out the mystery surrounding the secret jungle city of Hetherdale.

Preparation

1. If you can show the video introduction in class and brainstorm a few ideas on what they think the story is about and what they think they will need to do in the game.
2. Tell them they are going to go online and use three internet explorer windows to 1) play a game using 2) a walkthrough and 3) an online dictionary when necessary.
3. What English words do they predict will be in the walkthrough.  What words do they predict that they don’t know the word in English for.  Get them to explain them to you to translate and write up on a board.

Preplay

In the computer room get them to open three internet explorer windows and direct them to this site.

They can use the links above the picture here to 1) play the game 2) find a walkthrough and for 3) they should find an online dictionary to use.  Ask them if they know any good ones.

Play

They can then play the game using the three internet explorer windows.  Your role is to monitor, help with language and make sure that each learner gets a turn to use the mouse to play the game.

Post Play

If they don’t complete the game in class then set it for homework.  It’s a bit risky to hope to continue the game next class.  Some learners may well go home and complete the game without you telling them to or not.  Next class you can ask learners to explain the story to you.  You can ask about:

Who was in it?

What part did they play in the game?

What locations were there?

What happened at each location?

What were the most difficult parts?

Was it a good story?  etc

Level: Upper Intermediate & above (adults)

Topic: Crime (Solve a murder)

Language Focus: Understanding Language in Context

Time: Computer room + homework to finish (1 hour to complete)

Game: Crime & Investigation

Preparation

A There is an in-game toolbar that you need to make learners aware of before they play the game:

1 Access to all the files containing information on autopsy room, case screening room, investigation board, interrogation room , evidence lab and research library

2 Quick link to the evidence lab.

3 Checklist – tells you what you need to be doing.

4 Messages – During the course of the game you will get calls on the case.  If you hear it ringing you should answer it.

5 Map – Includes areas where clues, witnesses and suspects can be found.

The two most important in-game tools are the checklist and Case Files.

B Learners should make an ingame dictionary and take their notebooks to the computer room to make notes on difficult language.  Dictate the following table in class:

Play

1 Learners access the game and can watch or skip the introduction at the beginning

2 Learners play the game recording any language they feel is particularly important and that they don’t know in their tables (see above)

3 As you monitor look at the language they record and ask questions like:

“Where did you see this word?”,  “What were you doing?”, “How is this word(s) relevant to the case?” etc

Learners describe the game context they saw the language in and you negotiate the meaning of the language.

4 If a learner is having difficulty and is further behind the others you should be able to direct them to another player/ pair who can help them.

Post Activity

Back in the classroom set learners some dictionary work to find out the meaning of any of the language they are still unsure about.

Learners can teach and test each other on the new language items.

It works well as an interactive reader, and can be given to learners either for homework, or as an activity for them to do in the computer room. If you give this to the learners for homework, then copy and print out the whole story below.

If you use this with learners in the computer room, then  copy the sections entitled ‘Story’ below and print them out on different pieces of paper. Give the first one to the learners to set the scene.

I suggest writing the titles of each part of the story/game on the board and tell the learners to ask for the parts they need (i.e. when they get to that part) As they complete the puzzles, you can give them the next parts of the reading text, until they finish the game.

It should take about 20-30 minutes for them to do. Back in the classroom, you can focus on the language used in the actual story – there’s a lot of vocabulary and grammar there that is worth examining.

As a follow-up, you can ask them to write the background of the story (what happened before they arrived at the ship) and the next part (what happened after the game) .

STORY

Beginning:

Ugh! Where am I? how did I get here? It looks like the cargo bay of a spaceship. Now I remember – we answered a distress call from a trading ship called the ‘Avalon Star’, but nobody answered when we tried to make contact with the crew.

I remember me and my partner entering the spaceship. We had to cut our way in through the emergency air-lock. It was so strange inside – no sign of anyone. Where were the people? We started moving down the empty corridors of the ship, heading for the bridge. Then my partner, who was behind me cried out. I turned around and it all went black.

And now it looks like I’m alone in this cargo bay. Looks like the door to the cargo hold is locked – access denied! Let’s explore and see if I can find my way out of here.

Cryo Tubes 1

What are those things over there? Cryogenic tubes? That’s where the crew members would sleep  if they were going into deep space. All but one are open, so the crew definitely awoke. Hmmm…one seems to be locked. And  there’s no power either – very strange!

Computer Navigation 1

The computer navigation system is broken – that explains why the ship is drifting, I suppose. If the ship’s navigation system had a malfunction on the way to wherever it was going, then that would explain why the crew were woken up. But where are they? I know there must be at least one of them on the ship – or I wouldn’t have been hit on the head. At least, I suppose it was a member of the crew that hit me…

Security Console 1

This could be the key to me getting out of this room – it obviously controls the security in this room, and maybe the whole ship. so, I need to find a disc in order to activate it. That might be the trick. but where should I look?

Engineering Bay

Aha! This looks promising. Let me see – there are a number of revolving rectangles, and a pulsing blue circle. What happens if I press the space bar now? It seems as if the rectangles turn blue if I press the right ones and they reset to transparent if I press a wrong one. The key then is to press the right ones in the right order- I can change which lever is selected by moving the left and right arrows. I think the power will come on again if I manage to solve this puzzle.

Cryo tubes 2

Now the power’s on – let me see if I can work out the code to open this cryo tube. It seems that this involves turning all of the 8 lights to be ‘on’. Hmmm…if I can get all the lights to go out I can switch all the lights to the on position by simply clicking the middle. Let me try this sequence to see if it works….1, 2,2,3,2,2,3,2,1…Nice…and what’s inside? A computer data disc? Now where can I use that?

Computer Navigation /Security Console 2

Well, this is working OK now. And it seems like that data disc I found fits here. Rock n’ roll! Now what’s this? It looks like another puzzle. I think I’ve seen this before. If I remember well, the object of  is to get the solid blinking square to the X square without touching any of the walls. The other squares are blockades which will keep you from touching the walls, and which will also help you get to the goal. The arrows tell me which way the square will move (so I’ll have to pay attention to the highlights).

The Door

Wow! That’s great…it looks like the door’s finally open . Now to find my partner and figure out what happened on this ship and who put me in here.

Walkthrough adapted from jayisgames.com

The Game

Runescape is a very popular online role playing game where players can interact with each other within a medieval style fantasy world.  It has a short tutorial which serves to walk new players through some of the simple every day in-world activities such as choosing what their character looks like (physical features and clothes) and fighting dragons. There is a lot of text in the runescape tutorial but the graphics and the action scenes make the reading both fun and functional.  For difficult language items, learners can use dictionaries (online or printed), ask you or record it in their own gaming dictionary which you can help with as you monitor.

Preparation

There are 4 steps you need to take before you start playing and you may have to talk your learners through it.  Within five minutes though you should all be in and starting out on your first task –  kill the dragon!

1 Click on play Runescape (it takes a minute or so to load)

2  Create an account (the information given here is confidential)

3 Supply an email and agree to terms and conditions ( email is used if you need to recover your password and ticking all the boxes is usually what I ask learners to do)

4 Enter your character’s name & password.

Playing

If you are lucky enough to have a computer/ learner ratio of 1:1 then great but you can always get them to play this game in pairs.  In the reading task they may be able to peer teach difficult language items.

As the game starts your learners get exposure to ‘parts of the body’ vocabulary. You can see them listed on the left in the screenshot.

Click on a ‘part of the body, and lots of language associated with that body part appears to the right of the list. You could argue there’s a lot to pre-teach here but why not let learners just play.  They can see what each vocabulary item means by clicking on it and looking at the changes to their character (or avatar) on the right.

Once your learners have decided what their character/ avatar is going to look like they start the game.  First there are a few control instructions telling them what keys to use in the game and which the game then tests them on by getting your learner to do some actions using those keys.  They then find themselves in a room with a knight, an elf and a dragon.  What do they need to do now?  Well, they will have to go and talk to the knight, Sir Vant:

In the screenshot above, Sir Vant is the knight standing between me and the dragon (phew!).  He’ll ask your learners to do a few things via text boxes that appear in the bottom left hand corner.  Your learners need to read, understand and then do these instructions.  There are some nice uses of the first conditional in the game:

You do get other tasks that your learners can do:

But I think it’s fair to say that fighting a dragon is enough to be getting on with, at least for one class.

Tell your learners if they get stuck they should go and see Sir vant.  If one group is having considerable difficulty, ask another group that is doing well to help them out (in English!).

What you can also do is get your learners to record the in-game language by making a gaming dictionary.  You can either download the Gaming Dictionary Template or simply ask your learners to turn their notebooks upside down and turn to the back page.  Then ask them to draw four columns and then simply dictate the four titles above each column from the Gaming Dictionary Template

There are a few times when the game will ask your learners to choose what they would like their character to say.  They will then see 2 or three options.  The answer they choose will decide the direction the game takes.  Easy to understand?  Why not play the game yourself and see what it’s like?