What have we learned?

A game can be a learning experience.

In ESOL in the UK, we are very used to playing games. However, most typically they are used to practise a learning point and have been adapted for that purpose: verb tense use for example via grammar Snakes and Ladders. We learned in this project that a game can be played for its own sake and produce learning. The game itself is a learning experience. In the Lateral Thinking Game players were talking, listening, reading and thinking simultaneously – multi-skilling but without a specific practice-focus. The game was a form of task-based learning – competences, plus more particular structured learning moments, emerged from the play.

A similar process took place in ACT ESOL. The play itself was the purpose. Within the play, learning, development, practice was taking place. More structured focus, for instance of vocabulary, happened at specific moments within the play or after the play-games but in both cases pursuant on what had emerged from the play itself.