Game-based tasks in a ‘speaking classroom’: Collaborative map-drawing as an agent for rhizomatic learning

Abstract

Games are used as effective pedagogical tools in language classrooms. Gamifying language tasks can motivate learners to actively participate in the learning process. Probing how games in English language classrooms enable rhizomatic learning, this research study explores how the use of collaborative drawing, elements of gamification, and improvisation function as agents for rhizomatic learning. The study also attempts to find the pedagogical implications of developing learners’ speaking proficiency through map-drawing games. In the intervention, a teacher-led map-drawing game adapted from The Quiet Year by Avery Alder was used with 7th-grade learners from India to understand how this game influences their speaking proficiency. The learners in groups engaged in the game by drawing maps, building communities, and creatively responding to the prompt cards facilitated by the researcher. This qualitative study illustrates the non-linear affordances of rhizomatic learning through games in an English language classroom. Post-game activities, such as discussions with hypothetical questioning through prompt cards were analysed. The findings of the study discuss the pedagogical implications of developing learners’ speaking proficiency through games. The results may also assist researchers and educators in formulating more strategies that involve creative practices and gamification of tasks in language classrooms with the informed nature of rhizomatic learning.