Creating Language Games
Sonja Eisenbeiss & Carla Marciano
seisen@essex.ac.uk @LanguageGames4a
http://essex.academia.edu/SonjaEisenbeiss/
http://languagegamesforall.wordpress.com/
https://childdirectedspeech.wordpress.com/
Overview

Why do language acquisition researchers develop
language games?
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Student Projects about Language Games: What can
you learn from the creation of language games?
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A solution for some practical problems: the language
games tool kit and resource site
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How can language teachers use language games
(creation) to support language learning?
Why do linguists develop language games?
 We want to study how learners acquire language.
 We need rich data that are as naturalistic as possible.
 We do not want to underestimate what learners can do
by looking at the same situation over and over again –
for instance by always recording people during meal
time with the same food.
 We do not want to overestimate what learners can do –
for instance by recording them in situations where they
can use fixed phrases and sentences that they have
heard many times before.
 We want to make our projects fun for learners.
How do Linguists Study Children’s Language?
 Naturalistic data / spontaneous speech samples:
 recordings in everyday situations
 naturalistic input or child data, but often lacking relevant
utterances
 Experiments:
 controlled variables, fixed stimuli and procedures
 good control of variables, but often “unnatural” or not
appropriate for younger children
 Elicitation games/tasks
 games that encourage language use
 some control over the words and structures children
use, but still quite natural and fun
An Example: Possessives
 Children over- or under-use possessive s:
 * This is John (=John’s) house.
 * This is mine’s.
 We want to determine the reasons for such problems.
 We want to support acquisition, especially in
populations with language impairments.
 Even long naturalistic recordings may not contain any
examples of possessives – in particular if the child is
not fighting about possessions with other children.
 Typically developing children are too young for
production experiments when they produce these errors
(around 2 years).
Some Elicitation Games for Possessives
 Children have to find matching cards with possessors
and their possession (e.g. queen – crown) in a Memorystyle game.
 Children are given toy characters and their possessions
and are asked to find out what belongs to whom. A silly
puppet will challenge them and encourage discussion.
 Children have to tell another person whose balloon is
red in a picture with lots of people and their balloons.
The listener then has to colour in the balloons in their
own black-and-white copy (see e.g. Koch 2010, Bevan
2010).
Possessives: Naturalistic Data vs. Games
Eisenbeiss (2000): a comparison of 44 naturalistic
recordings and 20 possessive game recordings with
German children (age: 1;11-3;6).
 70% of the naturalistic recordings did not contain a
single possessive.
 10.969 naturalistic utterances only contained 29
possessives.
 In contrast, the game recordings provided sufficient
examples for quantitative analyses.
 We also found more variety of possessors (not just
mommy’s, daddy’s).
Game-Type I: Barrier or Director/Matcher Games
 A “director” describes a scene/object etc. and a
“matcher” who is not able to see this scene/object,
has to recreate it.
 E.g.: The matcher has to build a toy house identical to
the one created by the director who is hidden behind
a screen.
 Bevan (2010): Whose Ballon is red? Two sets of
pictures, both with animals that have balloons, one
with coloured and one with blank balloons.
Whose Balloon is red? (Bevan 2010)
Whose Balloon is red? (Bevan 2010)
Game-Type II: Speaker/Listener Games
 A speaker provides information for someone who
does not have access to the information.
 Variant 1: speakers retell a story they have heard
while the listeners were out of the room.
 Variant 2: speaker tells a puppet that cannot see what
is going on.
Game-Type III: Co-Player Games
 All Participants are involved in a game and provide
each other with information to co-ordinate their
actions.
 For instance, players can be involved in a
construction or puzzle game.
The Puzzle Task (Eisenbeiss 2009, 2011)
 a task with co-players:
child describes contrasting
pictures on a puzzle board,
adult finds the matching
pieces, child puts them
into the correct cut-out
 exchangable pictures and
puzzle pieces
 can be used to elictit
particular forms or to elicit
the linguistic encoding of
particular meanings
Contrasting Puzzle Pictures (Eisenbeiss 2011)
Broad-Spectrum Tasks
 general encouragement to speak
 Frog Story: a picture book w/o words used to elicit
narratives (Berman/Slobin 1994)
 Bag Task: a bag with bag for blocks and animals of
different sizes and colours. The bag has pockets that
match the animals in colour an have coloured buttons,
ties, etc.; and children frequently refer to colours,
sizes and locations when they ask other players to
help them hide or find animals in the pockets
(Eisenbeiss 2009, 2010)
 contrasts between colours, sizes, locations, etc.
The Broad Spectrum, Co-Player Bag Game
The game involves a
bag with pockets of
different styles,
colours and sizes for
toys of different sizes
and colours.
Children refer to
colours, sizes and
locations when they
ask others to help
them hide or find toys
in the pockets.
Focused Tasks
 form-focused: the elicitation of particular forms or
constructions, for instance, picture-matching game for
the elicitation of noun-adjective constructions (little
cow -- big cow)
 meaning-focused: the linguistic encoding of a
particular meaning that can be encoded in different
ways, e.g. my car / Sonja’s car / ? the car of Sonja?
In a game about people and their possessions
Stimuli
 static (pictures, photos) for object/person properties
 dynamic (video, cartoon) for events
 realistic displays (photos) for easy recognition,
independent of children’s knowledge of artistic
conventions (3D, shadows, etc.)
 drawings, cartoons for easy systematic variation
The Role of Contrasts
Contrasted elements are more likely to be encoded:
 Contrasting possessors (e.g. the panda) in Bevan’s
whose-balloon-is-red-task are mentioned.
 However, the balloons do not contrast with other
toys and are often not mentioned.
Student Projects about Language Games
• Motivating students to learn about
• properties of their (second) language
• communication
• Transferable skills training
• Research/analytical skills
• IT skills
• Communication skills
• Work Placements and Collaboration with Charities
Learning About Linguistic Properties
• What is the generalisation in the target language?
• For instance, when do speakers use ‘s and of?
Jane’s leg
vs. the leg of Jane
my mother’s leg
vs. the leg of my mother
my table’s leg
vs. the leg of my table
• How complex can linguistic structures get?
Jane’s mother’s father’s dog’s leg
Learning about Communication
Raising awareness of language processing and
interaction priniciples (e.g. the role of contrasts) and
people’s motivation to engage in communication
• director/matcher games
• speaker/listener games
• co-player games
Practical Problems: Creating Games
Creating game materials for each language game
• is a lot of work
• expensive
• needs quite a bit of inspiration and creativity
• requires storage space for all those game materials
Practical Problems: Students’ Game Creation
Students face the same problems as teachers.
In addition:
• They may not have the IT or craft skills.
• They will have lots of questions about resources
and processes.
• You cannot spend all of your time on the practical
training, but need to focus on the design and
linguistic aspects of the games.
Our Solution: “Language in a Bag” – “hardware”
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fabric-based materials that allow people to create
their own games easily:
a felt mat with a pattern made of Velcro strips
fabric strips with Velcro strips.
clear plastic ID holders
straps or handles from laptop bags etc.
coloured elasticated strings and ribbons
key rings
additional: little pockets with added Velcro strips
(e.g. old jewellery sachets)
Our Solution: “Language in a Bag” – online
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We have created a website and blog, with
• readings for game creators
• descriptions of games
• downloadable materials (e.g. pictures)
After the launch of our new Centre for Language
Development throughout the Lifespan (LaDeLi)
on 02/07/2015, we will regularly post patterns,
game ideas, etc. for “language in a bag”. You can
already see some game materials and
descriptions here:
http://languagegamesforall.wordpress.com/