COMMUNICATION GAMES: DO WE
KNOW WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT?
Group: 2009 Xoldorov Sunnatilla Toshniyozov Asilbek
INTRODUCTION
•
According to David Gardner, Some teachers have
been using games in the EFL classroom for many
years, others wait to be convinced of their utility.
Those who make use of games do so for a variety
of reasons, most of which are reflected in the
literature about games. It is interesting to note that
most of this literature is of an extremely practical
nature: it is aimed at the practising teacher who is
looking for new ideas. Little space is devoted to
discussing the rationale of specific games. Both
the suggestions of the authors, and the practical
applications of the teachers are, based on intuition
and not on practical evidence.
• The
work reported in this paper was an attempt to analyse
a corpus of empirical data gathered when using one
particular game, and to compare it with claims made about
some of the uses of information-gap games. Ten
hypotheses were formulated relating either to the sort of
language use that the game would encourage or the sort of
language which would characterize groups who
successfully completed the game. Information was then
sought either to support or to disprove these hypotheses.
Describe and Arrange
•
The data were collected by playing a ‘Describe and Arrange’ game with 23
pairs of university pre-sessional students. The game was modelled on
examples of similar games given in Byrne and Rixon (1979)) Christison and
Bassano (1981), Geddes and McAlpin (1978), and Winn-Bell Olsen (1977).
•
One partner had to describe a pre-arranged set of pictures, while the other
was required to arrange identical individual pictures in the same order. The
pictures of both participants were unnumbered, thus provoking true
communication, not only to find a particular picture, but also to locate it.
The hypotheses
•
Many of the claims made about communication games by writers and
teachers are untestable. Others are only testable with resources beyond
those available for this work. For these reasons measurability was an
important criterion in the establishment of the following 10 hypotheses.
•
1. The game would encourage the practice of vocabulary related to
description, and position. A claim often made for the Describe and Arrange
game is that it allows the players to practice vocabulary. In this instance we
would expect vocabulary to be related to the descriptions of the pictures and
also to their location.
•
2. The game would encourage participants to correct their own errors and
those of their peers. Across the whole group, 231 errors of pronunciation
and 233 grammatical errors were detected. It is interesting to note, however,
that the former category was responsible for the majority of comprehension
difficulties. It is possible to categorize the errors in the following way: accepted:
•
those errors which the pair ignored and were unaffected by; - problematical:
those errors which caused the pair some comprehension problems; - selfcorrected:
•
in which the error was corrected by the perpetrator; - peer-corrected:
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in which the other player in the group did the correcting
•
3. The game would be enjoyed by the participants. On the face of it, this
seems the easiest hypothesis to test. Students were asked to complete a
short questionnaire. Of those questioned, 73 per cent said they would like to
have done more activities of this nature on their pre-sessional course.
However, when completing the questionnaire, the students tried, with great
persistence, to find out which answers would give the questioner the
greatest pleasure. It is also significant that on the questionnaires of the 73
per cent of students who favored the activity, 81 per cent of all answers
were ‘Yes’. The problem here is that it is impossible to know what people
think, only what they say they think.
4. The success-l completion of the task would relate directly to the number of
misunderstandings experienced. Intuitively, teachers might say that pairs
which experience a greater number of misunderstandings would have a
reduced chance of completing the task successfully. By comparing the
frequency of misunderstandings in successful and unsuccessful pairs, we find
that the data clearly do not support this hypothesis.
And also, there are several more hypotheses about the game which you can
see below.
•
The successful completion of the task would relate directly to the sort of
vocabulary used
•
The successful completion of the task would relate directly to the early or
late discussion of position
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The successful completion of the task would relate directly to the number of
clarifications.
•
The successful completion of the task would relate directly to the number of
errors
•
The successful completion of the task would relate directly to the speed at
which the task was completed.
•
The speed at which the task was completed would have a positive
correlation with any of the variables in hypotheses
Conclusion
•
It seems clear that this game encourages participants to practise language
related to description and, to some extent, location. It is something of a
surprise to find that the language is dominated by the former category,
particularly when we discover that it is lack of ability to manipulate the latter
category which causes the greatest number of problems. There is also
some evidence for a relationship between the sort of language used and
successful completion of the task. Unfortunately this relationship is of such a
complex nature that it is unlikely to be one which can easily be reduced to a
simple formula for success.
THANKS
FOR
ATTENTION
Questions
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1. Who this article belongs to? David Gardner
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2. How many hypotheses were used “Describe and Arrange” game? 10
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3. How many pre-sessional students were involved in the game in to order
to get the data? 23