Gamification – Vocabulary Retention. Let’s Gamify our classrooms!
By Dimitris Kouniakis TEFL/ TESOL Educator / Teacher Trainer / Public Speaker / School owner
It is without a doubt that some of the most common barriers learners face are often a result of their disengagement from their learning process and environment.
Most of our learners have been coined as “cognitive impatient” and find rote learning tedious. Effective learning takes place when there is a combination of cognitive and non-cognitive factors set in motion. Hence, it is the educators’ responsibility to establish a safe and supportive learning environment that complies with the principles of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) (Willis, 2021). Should this learning environment be set up in order to be inclusive, supportive and one that fosters educator–learner and peer relationships, then it can enable the learners to display critical thinking skills, empathy and, perseverance while it enables them to communicate, collaborate and be creative. Last but not least, it promotes and develops metacognition and self-awareness.
These are many of the issues that “Gamification” can help both learners and educators to overcome as it implicitly promotes Social Emotional Learning.
There are many ways to integrate Gamification techniques as an intervention through our curriculum design while aiming to achieve specific learning outcomes such as -in this case- vocabulary retention.
On a cognitive level, a learner may display either a knowledge deficit where they are unfamiliar with some or even all the lexical items. “Gamification -Vocabulary Retention” is designed to have a flexible approach that anticipates barriers and overcomes them.
The pre-stage of “Gamification” allows the learners to look at the highlighted lexical items in the course book with the aid of open-book “companions” which are the readily provided vocabulary banks. This would enable the active participation of learners who are not familiar with the vocabulary to do so. This activity can also be designed as a pair activity, hence promoting learner collaboration.
Once the learners have become familiar with the lexical items they will be dealing with, they then proceed to the “creative” part of the learning process. The learners will be assigned in groups to come up with the appropriate lexical items that will be the creation of the word list of lexical items that cannot be used. Once again, any knowledge deficits or social-emotional barriers learners might manifest are overcome by the flexible learning environment, peer interaction and collaboration along with scaffolding whenever requested or rendered necessary. The learners become intrinsically motivated and involved in the creation of “Gamification” while benefiting not only from the social-emotional interaction but also on a cognitive level.
The last stage is the execution of “Gamification-Vocabulary Retention” itself. The learners have done the brainstorming, selected the lexical items of choice, and prepared the cards and the word lists. The learners can now choose how they would like to play. They can each take random cards and play individually or they can form teams. The learners who might lack social skills such as the shy, the introverts or those who do not feel confident enough to speak in front of the class are given the option to remain seated.
It is clear that “Gamification- Vocabulary Retention” is a carefully designed intervention that aims to implicitly prompt cognitive development – vocabulary retention- while explicitly promoting social-emotional skills and fostering a flexible and inclusive learning environment.
On a cognitive level, it is flexible as it addresses the learners’ individual academic level by assigning them lexical items that are level-appropriate. The learners can randomly choose or be assigned specific lexical items in order to gradually progress from less challenging to more challenging.
On a social-emotional level, “Gamification” not only prompts and promotes the learners’ social-emotional skills such as creativity, collaboration and public speaking skills but makes inclusive provision for a top-bottom and bottom-top approach that appeal and cater for each learner’s individual personality and needs. Gamifying the lesson allows a flexible holistic learner-centered approach to take place where learning can become an enjoyable experience, learners learn to accept each other’s differences and develop a wide range of skills, such as metacognition, self-awareness and ongoing peer and teacher formative assessment.
Apart from achieving to involve and engage learners in language production and language learning, “Gamification” promotes high-order thinking skills, it creates and fosters an inclusive and supportive language learning environment that empowers students not only to learn but also an environment that promotes and praises holistic learning (Rosenshine, 2012) as a 21st-century student-centered approach.
Appendix
- Customized made lexical item cards
- Discover 4 (Oxford) EFL course book – Highlighted new lexical items.
