Playing word games to practise speaking

[Olle Linge]

I've always loved playing games, so it's only natural for me to use games both as a teacher and a student. In my experience, this is something that goes down well with almost everyone and I've used different kinds of games to practise English with Chinese speakers. The problem is that there are thousands of these games out there on the internet (four million hits for "ESL word game). Most of them aren't very good. Some are, however, and I know one game which is so good and so useful I thought it worth writing a special article about it. In short, it's about describing words without using the word in question, which is quite good for practising fluency and helping shy students to start talking.

However, I don't intend to talk about that particular game here, but rather I'd like to hear what other people have to say about this. I've almost never encountered playing games as a part of learning Chinese if the teacher is a native Chinese-speaker, but it's extremely common for language practise here in Sweden. Is this a cultural difference? I want to integrate fun and learning as much as possible and most people do enjoy games of some kind (remember that most of these aren't really competitive).

So, the TLDR version:

• Do you use games to learn or teach Chinese?
  
• If yes, what are your favourite games?
  
• Am I right saying that this is rare in schools in China?
  
• If yes, what do you think is the reason?
  

[feihong]

Apples & Apples is an excellent game for language learning. It's obviously better for learning English, but in my Chinese study group we used some revised rules to make it work for us. For learning Chinese, 三国杀 is pretty great. I have used games extensively in my language learning, but they were mostly video games.

Yes, I don't think schools in China use games very much. But I've seen schools that didn't even have textbooks, too. Part of it must be cultural, but part of it is about resources. At the school I worked at, you had to get an administrator's approval to take pens and other office supplies from the storeroom. Copier use was strictly rationed.

There is another game I've heard great things about, that some dude used for his English classes, but I can't remember the name of the guy nor of the game itself. It was a card game where each card named an object (or possibly a place). Players have to pick one of the cards in their hand and describe how another player dies while interacting with that object (for example: "Uh, Bernard was ironing his shirt, but then he slipped and dropped his iron on his, uh, face. Then his, um, face melts off"). Then all players vote on the best (i.e. funniest) death story and the winning storyteller gets one point. It was something like that, I never actually used it in my classes, but it does sound like something my own students would've enjoyed.

[Olle Linge]

I don't think I've played that game, but if we're talking more advanced learners, there are thousands of storytelling games that are close to what you describe. For instance, you could play Once Upon a Time in Chinese (you have a number of cards with story elements on your hand and you play them as you're telling a story, then there are rules for interrupting the narrator and taking control of the story, each player trying to make the story end the way they want it to end according to a hidden card they were dealt at the beginning). There is another game that would work quite well where people play underlings of an evil master and are sent on missions, but they always screw up somewhere and the players have to tell the evil master what happened, why they failed and whey each individual player isn't to blame. Basically any lightweight role-playing or storytelling game works.

This is for quite advanced learners, though. Do you have any suggestions for things that might work for people who have studied a year or less?

[feihong]

Apples & Apples works well for newbies. You just need to remember the rule that lets you toss out cards that you don't want to play. So if a player doesn't know the meaning of a given word, she can just exchange that card for a new card. Although I think it would be fun to have people put down cards they don't know, and only explain what they mean at the end of the round. Also, the rules only stipulate that you need to put down one card per round, you're not required to actually explain why you put down a particular card (although it helps if you can).

[laurenth]

Am I right saying that this is rare in schools in China?

My experience in learning chinese in China is extremely limited (one 2-week period in Beijing) but the teacher made us play a word game in order to practice writing, not speaking. In the afternoon, at the end of the class, she would pick 12-15 random words among those we had learnt on that particular day and give us 10-15 minutes to write an essay that would include all of these words. Sometimes there was no topic, sometimes she would give a topic. I found it funny - the stories were sometimes out there - and very useful too: afterwards, the words tended to stick in my memory, just because I had made an effort to use them, because I heard the same words used in contexts devised by other students, and because the said contexts were sometimes strange.