Let's build a cottage!
Playing coop games to motivate participation of english students.

Minecraft Event, Education, 1/23/2014

Through the years, I've been learning English by consuming content made by native English speakers, and playing video games. Before the release of the 3rd generation of 3D gaming consoles, it was rare to see games that were translated into Spanish, so kids at the time were forced to learn some English in order to be able to play. While all we had to do was to translate text to understand rules, dialogues, or notifications, modern titles have lots of game dynamics requiring communication skills between humans.

A group of people building a cottage in Minecraft, a team of five coordinating to take an objective in League of Legends, or some paranoid people trying to find an impostor in Among Us, all of them need verbal communication to achieve success. While usually kids, teens, and adults play in their native language, playing games together in a “foreign language learning environment” may motivate students to actively participate in the practice of speaking skills in an unfamiliar language.

Over the years, playing video games has allowed me to meet people without awkwardly asking myself "what the **** do I talk to these people about?" Unlike a classroom where no one knows each other, no one wants to talk to strangers, and no one wants to do something that may embarrass them… like speaking a language they don't know. Meanwhile, strangers from all around the world play together this or that game where you never know where everyone is from, and so, sometimes you play with people while speaking other languages.
English is the default language for online games, so it is common for everybody to talk or chat in English, however, it is usual for other small communities united by language to be formed.

In her book "How Games Move Us: Emotion by Design", Katherine Isbister talks a lot about situations where game mechanics incentivize people to make stuff they wouldn't usually do, such as physical contact, voice acting, or a shy and socially anxious person of the group becoming the leader of a team just by skill and knowledge of the game. She also talks about how games work as spaces where social rules from day-to-day life are disregarded to create new social rules where everybody plays in the same conditions, even if someone is already familiar or even good at the game.

On the other hand, Jesper Juul uses an entire book, titled “The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games”, to summarize how failure is not only a common situation, but a normal one, socially accepted, and even a desired thing such as the cycle of try-fail-repeat is the only way to become a good player, so everybody starts from the same place, everybody has the same conditions, and even the newest players can compete against veterans and win just by luck in some games.

If you've been following the idea maybe you see what my point will be.

During my participation as IT-staff in the International Congress of Languages 2021 (CIL) organized by my work center, I noticed how the lack of participation among students regardless of age or level is not only a problem but also a research topic among professionals of education, “how do we make students talk?”, here is where I have a maybe not so obvious answer: “Bro, let's just play some Minecraft together, people will have to talk eventually”.

Of course, playing just because of playing will not cause any player to magically speak a new language, but games should be explored as a space for teaching and learning without the awkwardness of a classroom where any mistake will be judged either by a grade or by the laughter of the other students …and kids can be cruel and particularly good at judging.

Ok, Games Instead Of Classrooms… But Now What?

Playing games should not be seen as a place to teach grammar theory, but a place for exercising the language by usage. Unlike a session where everybody talks awkwardly about their favorite food or the last vacation they had, games in their own context, will force players to talk about lots of stuff without feeling pressured, judge, or like they are inside a classroom and need to get out.

“What should we name our seed (map)?” “Ok, so, what do we do?” “We need to make our first house”

Simple interactions that come out just by playing, either by giving instructions on controls, giving directions to explore the map, asking for a “crafting recipe”, or organizing to collect materials, the social aspect of the multiplayer game dynamics will fill people's head with questions, opinions, or just random comments.

I'm not a teacher myself, so things like the English level needed and the level to exercise, learning objectives, and other teaching-nerd stuff needed are outside my scope, but just by intuition I'll suggest some activities based more on game design rather than instructional design.
So, we have some places to get with this:

• Students have to practice the foreign language.
• Teacher's presence is needed to solve questions, explain new vocabulary, expressions, etc.
• Students shall have social interactions.
• There must be a clear engaging activity or students will just go play Minecraft as usual.

As general advice, if we can involve students with different native languages the efficiency of these activities may increase, but to talk with facts some research should be done about it.

Geography is not a limitation as most players are used to playing online, so all we need to participate is the internet and a communication app such as Skype, MS Teams or my personal favorite (and in my opinion the best communication app on the market) Discord.
What is needed for these activities?

• Basic knowledge of the game (professors may be the problem here).
• A pc with internet and the same version of Minecraft for each player.
• An account able to put a server online or a cloud-hosted server.
• Players

Other games can work just by having the game, unfortunately a server is needed to play Minecraft online, while in a computer lab, this can be made just by hosting the game on the local network, the post-pandemic situation of the world now (2021) and the international nature of language teaching, using the full potential of the internet is a must.

It is important to make clear: the teacher is a player too, if the teachers limit themselves to just answering questions and supervising the whole point of the game as a “space for teaching and learning” is missed.

Let's Build a Cottage!

English level: beginner… I guess.
Age target: any

A team of at least one teacher and two or more students up to 4, build a day one cottage to survive the first night.

The teacher may lead the work by creating objectives, assigning tasks, voting for what materials to use, giving instructions for exploration, etc.

Students will need to organize themselves while working, but some may limit themselves to just playing and following instructions. The teacher can fight this by asking these kinds of players for advice and opinions, giving them unique tasks, asking them to count and organize stuff, etc.

Building Contest and Display!

English level: intermediate, advanced
Age target: teens and older, kids can join if they feel comfortable with presentations

Players or teams of players build a house in a given area and the only limit of 12 blocks of height, design, materials, and thematic are up to the players.

Building time can be limited to just some hours or many days, but a limit of time must be settled.

When building time ends, players will give a tour through their houses and explain what they did, the style, colors, items, and maybe why they made this or that decision, ask the rest of the players for opinions and feedback, what they would change, and what they did like.

At the end of the activity the whole group may choose a winner, rank all buildings or take it as just a display rather than a competition, that take is up to the teacher.

Roleplaying

English level: intermediate, advanced
Age target: any, adults may struggle with acting more than kids

Set a theme and play like you were pirates, explorers, villagers or whatever the group wants. Go on adventures and build a story with whatever happens. In the end, the teacher may ask the students to write a chronicle about what happened, this can be done in-game but make sure to have enough “book and quill”

Virtual walk: The uncensored library

English level: intermediate, advanced
Age target: high school and bachelor students, adults

The uncensored library is a collaborative project where some Minecraft professional builders (yes there are people earning money building in a game), journalists and academics from around the world have built a majestic library with real documents inside that can be read in-game, why did they do this? I will let the authors tell you:

This map can be downloaded to play, and there must be a server running this map, but I didn't look up it.

This Minecraft map is a digital monument to preserve not only censored articles, but audio and images too in a place that cannot be reached by censorship from any country or organization and is also a memorial to all journalists who have lost their lives doing their job.

Letting emotions apart, a visit to this virtual place will surely give students something to talk about, but if you are looking for other kinds of walks, the internet is full of creations of the community to download and visit, from recreations of real-life places to fantasy realms out from fiction like The Lord of the Rings or Game of thrones.

A Different Kind of Aproach

Don't limit yourself to just playing, you can prepare people for these kinds of experiences with traditional methods, maybe a vocabulary session explaining materials and recipes in Minecraft, explaining grammar rules by telling stories of previous games. Remember the role-play activity? Why use your average text if you can use tales written by your players?

I'm not a professional in education but I think this may give some ideas to anybody who is, so take this as an option to incentive the student's participation in the practice of a language.

Future work

This approach to education has a multidisciplinary field of research, like evaluating the efficiency of this proposal against traditional classroom methods, development of game design for education, measuring the engagement level achieved, or getting some metrics on the population able to access this kind of methods as in this decade of 2020 not all people have access to a computer or the internet yet.

Start learning now

If you want to start learning a new language I invite you to check out the language courses avalible at Centro de Educación Continua y a Distancia. You may suggest one of these activities to your teacher to add some fun to the learning environment.
Go check our language courses by clicking here.

Thanks for reading :D
-Rage Amber
“Bright as a burning tree”