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Many people, including teachers and students, tend to believe that games are a waste of time and that the only way of learning is by completing large amounts of grammar exercises.
Many other think that games are only suitable when teaching children and young adolescents.
Truth be told, games are one of the greatest tools that teachers have at hand to insure students will have fun while learning.
Nowadays, students from different ages –especially those in the age range of 7 – 21 – are very into technology and computer games. No matter which games we are talking about, games are games and they all have an underlying principle behind them: games are goal-oriented and rule-driven process which will engage students in the process of learning.
Which is the main goal of a teacher? To help students communicate. If we take into account that games provide students with a stress-free environment, then games are the most suitable choice when wanting students to communicate freely. According to Wright, Betteridge and Buckby, games should be regarded as the center of a teacher's repertoire because they help create contexts in which language use will be meaningful because it will be freely produced by students to understand each other and to express themselves.
Games have lots of advantages: they are great for breaking the ice, for revising vocabulary and grammar previously learnt and what is more important: they allow students to communicate freely, without given phrases. The difficulty of games resides in the fact that teachers need to get used to coming up with them. There will be times in which you can use other people's games, but in order for games to fit your lessons' and students' needs, you need to get the hang of creating them.
Imagine a predictable class in which every time you enter, you know that first you will work with the student's book, then with some copies, then with a listening activity and then with the workbook… wouldn't it turn awfully boring? Well, games are the solution for that, creating a different game each class will make students feel eager to go to class, and they will learn without even noticing… by repeating patterns or vocabulary words so many times during games, the words will get fixed to students' brains without effort, regardless of their age.
Though it is true that an adult does not learn in the same way as a kid or a teenager, this does not mean that they do not enjoy games and that games cannot help them to learn. The difference relies on the fact that the teacher may have to explain the learning objective of the game to the adult student so that he knows and feels his learning while playing.
teachers need to give ‘games' the space they deserve in class. No matter the age range we are teaching, learning will be much more enjoyable for students and they will be happy to return to class the following day. Everybody likes to have fun, and games are a great way of doing so… this combine with learning a foreign language results in the greatest formula of all times ready for us to use… the question is: Do you dare?
