Comments on: Gaming language learning

By: Lester John A. Cajes

Lester John A. Cajes — Sat, 10 Dec 2022 14:59:56 +0000

I totally agree that Kahoot is highly engaging but has certain limitations in terms of language teaching since the learners are given options in all of the rounds or quiz formats. Nevertheless, I’ve personally experienced how effective it could still be with a well-thought-out plan. Besides using it in teaching grammar features through sentence completion, I also find this game effective in letting the students arrange sentences into a logical and coherent paragraph. I believe that the author’s comment on the lack of platform for learner reflection may be addressed through posing processing questions in between the rounds. What I usually do is allow my students to analyze the correct answer after each item and reflect on what has gone wrong with their responses. I started using Kahoot in 2017, and I’m amazed that, a couple of years later, many teachers in my school have started to use it too.

By: Maria Mikaela Henson

Maria Mikaela Henson — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 15:44:38 +0000

As the needs and interests of students evolve over time, as teachers, we need to adapt to the continuous changes. But as the author mentioned in the post, Educators choose an application or technology that may entice the curiosity of the learner for engagement while sustaining the quality education.

By: Syryl Camille Dofredo

Syryl Camille Dofredo — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 01:32:44 +0000

“Learning isn’t learning when students do not have fun” I have experienced teaching kids for tutorial classes, and one thing I have noticed is that they show excitement in learning whenever I get to introduce them to topics alongside interactive games. Thus, considering the COVID-19 pandemic that happened that totally shifted how I teach from face-to-face to online, I had to create a safe space for my students actually to learn even at the comfort of their homes; thus, as a millennial, I introduce them to brain games and applications like elevate and brain wars that will both utilize learning while having fun. Stimulating these activities would be a benefit for me as a tutor is seeing what is suitable for my students in learning so I can look for more ways, and as for my students, they will get to learn and enjoy like before in our face-to-face classes.

By: Nazzia

Nazzia — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 11:42:14 +0000

I recently finished a practical teaching unit in a kindergarten class. I noticed that the students were the most engaged and interested whenever there was an interactive game or activity. In this technologically advanced day and age, it is best to keep with the times and use as many of these tools such as digital boards and computer games to assist with learning. In addition to Kahoot!, there are other interactive learning tools that can and should be used to enhance the teaching and learning experience.

By: Sasha Sunshine

Sasha Sunshine — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 15:42:20 +0000

We are in the ‘Digital Age’ and as teaching and learning methodologies change it is important for teachers to keep up too. The use of technology in the classroom is highly efficient. Learners are exposed to audio, videos, unlimited texts as well as games to learn languages. Young learners are intrigued by technology and the use in classroom increases interest in lessons. However, as mentioned in the post it is not always the most effective strategy. A teacher needs to take the learners needs and skills into consideration with the incorporation of these methods in classrooms.

By: Thi Thanh Huyen Do

Thi Thanh Huyen Do — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 10:49:59 +0000

From my point of view, Game-based learning involves designing learning activities so that game characteristics and game principles inhere within the learning activities themselves. Game-based learning helps to promote engagement and sustained motivation in learning, but they do not necessarily result in improved learning outcomes. Kahoot! is a good example of applying the game to language learning and teaching. Kahoot’s system is highly regarded as one of the most positive, fun and effective ways for teachers to help students learn. Students tend to take well to a competitive, hands-on game that brings excitement. Kahoot manages to harness that idea and create a super useful classroom tool for educators.

By: Irene Nguyen

Irene Nguyen — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 09:56:09 +0000

There are numerous ways to teach a second language using media such as movies, music or even foreign magazines. Yet, it is undeniable that gaming is greatly the most effective way to give students a language lesson; which can help them easily engage in lessons and feel more motivated for their learning. Also, promoting games in the language classroom can significantly increase the vital teacher-student and peer interaction that can improve both teaching and learning quality. It’s time to forget the boring books then let the students get involved in more authentic learning materials – gamings.

By: Saichon

Saichon — Sun, 03 Nov 2019 10:10:04 +0000

Technology and games are used to motivate students. From my personal experience, using games to encourage classroom activities helps students to learn. It is true that if we analyze that semiotic and multimodal functions on Kahoot do not encourage students to improve writing and reading skill. However, I found that games and activities in the classroom are used to encourage classroom dynamic, and it should be in the short time period. Considering about short period of time, Kahoot suits well in this situation. Surely, we cannot use it to run classroom activity completely, but since teachers can make a decision and organize classroom activities, this article brings some points that teachers should be more careful when it comes to choose the learning activity.

By: Rajendra Prasad Kandel

Rajendra Prasad Kandel — Sun, 03 Nov 2019 05:40:14 +0000

Given the latest scenario, teaching-learning activities without technology seem inconceivable; it is ubiquitous. Technology has not only made the learning process faster, productive and economical but also accessible to all learners. Because of the advanced digital technology, a student can easily get access to the immense reservoir of knowledge such as excessive linguistic resources-reading texts, writing skills -promoting resources, listening audios, live conversations/debates, Vocabs, and sentence structure related games, so on and so forth. Technology has become an efficient and engaging contributor for making teaching-learning practices as the celebrations. Learning through games is one of the burning examples of this. Recent cutting edge techs have significantly promoted multimodality even in the second language learning classes. Constructive use of the tech-facilitated multimodal approach in the English language classroom is contributive for focused and student-friendly learning; instead of foisting upon a one-sided burden to the teacher, it helps to make the learner more innovative, initiative, interested and responsible to their learning.
In my school days, I couldn’t get the opportunity to get along with technologies like mobile phones, computer, i-pad, laptop, etc neither in different apps and websites promoting practical learning such as wikis, discussion forums, vocabulary.com, Magoosh vocabulary builders, etc. Neither my school had the financial strength to afford the expensive technologies nor there were digitally literate teachers. Even in the Bachelor and Master level, we used to entirely rely on the coursebook and the notebooks provided by the teachers; written examination would be the only way of assessing our learning achievement.
But, Macquarie University has provided the golden chance to be acquainted with the modern technologies and the devices backing up our learning output. In this sense I am the luky one.

By: Pramanandra Joshi

Pramanandra Joshi — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 01:28:06 +0000

This article pushed back me to my childhood when I was in elementary level, there was no technology but our English teacher used to play a wording game among students to improve our vocabularies. In the present context gaming and technology become the helping tool to teach the students. Nowadays students are smart in use of technology and they are more interested to learn by game. By using technology and gaming student can learn language without any stress and tension. In language teaching technology and gaming become the mile stone, because using different technology, apps and video learners can learn faster than other way. Thus technology and gaming is a boon for teaching English language.

By: Chi Tam Nguyen

Chi Tam Nguyen — Mon, 21 Oct 2019 05:31:48 +0000

I was very surprise to see show technology is used in the classroom of Australia institutions when I first experienced the lessons in Macquarie Uni. In Vietnam, there are insignificant attention paid to the use of technology seemingly due to the teachers’ lack of knowledge or information about the cutting edge tech used in classroom. Therefore, the language teaching that uses games or even technology is pretty rare. It could be great for students in my country to experience the game mentioned on this article because they are exposed to new things. However, how to change the traditional teaching ways in Vietnam where the tech is not popular could be a great question for teacher students who experienced new learning and teaching environment like me. Hopefully, I could figure out some ways to improve the situation.

By: Sofia

Sofia — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 12:05:46 +0000

Technology advancement has transformed the way language is taught. More images, videos, sound, music, games are used to make the lessons multimodal with the hope that the content of the lessons can be conveyed easier. However, we should bear in mind that the final goal of using technology in the classroom is to make the lesson more understandable or to make us communicate more effectively. In some developing countries, it is a trend that teachers try to apply technology in classrooms rigidly in order not to be recognized as lagged behind teachers. When I was in secondary school, a high tech board was bought for my class, then teachers can brag with parents that their kids are learning with state of the art technology. However, in fact we barely used the board for learning activities because it was not user-friendly.

By: Alisa

Alisa — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 13:36:35 +0000

Technology has long been an integral part of our lives. The education industry is also supposed to be affected by technology. Similar to the author’s experience, when we were children, there were not so many educational technologies in the classroom, such as multimedia, computers, whiteboards, games, etc. But in recent years, these technologies have appeared more and more in English classes. However, as I saw in the comments section, many people are not very optimistic about this new drive. They think there are still many restrictions on technology. Because of this, I advocate research on the use of new technologies. Only in practice can we find a way to integrate technology with English education.

By: yofa

yofa — Sat, 14 Sep 2019 10:27:14 +0000

Thank you, Luis for sharing such an interesting point of view.

However, as some friends might also agree, I believe that games cannot play the central role in the teaching-learning process but rather serve as complementary aspects integrated into the lesson plan. And the games are merely functioned to gather students’ attention or boost their moods when they, let say, get bored with the lesson.

It is said that Kahoot! provides limited opportunities in terms of reviewing the lesson being asked in the quiz and I might partly agree with this. However, if the teachers really want to make the most benefits out of Kahoot!, they can still do some pauses or screenshot and get students to review their answers. As the teachers, we can both use other technologies to handle technologies or, as you said, “modify the way we could possibly use them”

By: Laura

Laura — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 02:13:01 +0000

Thanks, Luis and congratulations on having your post published!

I have started using Kahoot in my teaching in law. I completely agree that it lacks integrated feedback/followup and this could definitely be a great future feature for their design team. However, as some of the previous commenters have suggested, it really comes down to how Kahoot! is used, and for what reasons.

I find that Kahoot! motivates and engages my students and creates a break or change of pace. It is also a useful way to gauge what the students have understood from the lesson (I usually do the Kahoot towards the end). If there are a lot of incorrect responses to a particular question it’s a good live indication that I haven’t explained something clearly or that there’s been a misunderstanding and I can then go back and look at that part of the lesson again. And then it really just comes down to how well you design the questions/responses, depending on your goals, and how well you integrate that feedback or follow-up yourself.

Just some reflections!

By: Alex P.

Alex P. — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 11:08:54 +0000

One must not underestimate the value in engaging students with games like Kahoot when as a teacher you can feel them drifting and disengaging. Kahoot is not a learning tool as such, it is a game where students test their knowledge against others for bragging rights. Yes, there is no reviewing and leisurely moving at one’s own pace, because it is a competition. However, as a teacher, it can be paused and vocab explained for example. Be it that these types of games are still a work in progress as far as language acquisition is concerned, they have opened the floodgates to permitting ELT to keep up with the times of technology and interacting at the students level. Improvements surely will come with time, but in my opinion, they can be a lifesaver.