How I taught with a game in junior high school EFL classes

Abstract

Background: In the Japanese junior high school where I taught English for three years, thanks to the soon-to-come introduction of the new action-oriented (or task-based) curriculum, the CEFR-J (Japanese adaptation of the European CEFR) I could introduce a game as a task-based language teaching tool.. Aim: Show a practical example of how ludic resources can be adopted as pedagogical solutions and indirectly used to reach/attain curriculum goals, in my case, national curriculum goals: the CEFR-J descriptors. Teaching methods: Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT) with frequent teacher mediation. Research methods: Evaluation, based on qualitative data. Results: Students’ fluency with in-game lingo and their communication skills improved. Also, thanks to the TBLT structure and the cooperative nature of the game, students felt like they gained better interpersonal skills. Conclusion: The in-game language range of the chosen game appears to be limited, but the practice and the experience with it paves the way for more language and context-rich games. Also this study shows how, with a lot of work from the teacher, social deduction games can be successfully implemented into an action-oriented curriculum while also fostering social skills useful even outside the classroom.