thekorfballer wrote:As some of you may know I am following a teacher training program in The Netherlands to become a teacher English

First of all, congratulations! Teaching is noble work, and I applaud any and all that aspire to do it, and particularly those who strive to do it better!

I myself am currently a PhD student in English, and I am already teaching a number of courses. In addition, I also volunteer at a local library teaching both citizenship and ESL classes. In both cases, I've found that using games is a wonderful way to add different elements to your pedagogy, and can be effective for many students when other methods are not.

thekorfballer wrote:emphasis has shifted towards fluency and communication. Lessons based on communicative goals have proven themselves to be more interesting than lessons based on grammar or vocabulary and therefore I am trying to make sure my lessons are interesting and innovative.

I cannot agree with this more. It is absolutely essential to engage your students in a way that will keep them interested; that is extremely challenging with boring things like grammatical rules - especially in English, because many of those rules are difficult and quite different than most other Germanic languages (like Dutch).

pandasecret wrote:I recommend you hand-picking private servers with trusted people - ones which will play civil, and encourage the kids to speak to them.

This is, in my opinion, the best way to start. Picking people that you know will not only be nice and friendly, but also can and are willing to help with your specific goals, is essential. There are already a number of volunteers; I'll add my name to the list.

Perhaps six of your students play a game with four forum regulars, as a starting point.

v3xt wrote:I've had games with plenty of conversation, but I've also had games where I exchanged less than 10 messages a day.

Oh yeah, this is definitely true. That's why I think it would be a good idea to structure the assignment like this:
1. The students are required to send a specific minimum number of messages each day.
2. Of that minimum number, each of the forum regulars in the game must be contacted at least once.
3. All messages sent to other participating students must be in English.
I'm not sure exactly what your curriculum is, but if you are working on vocabulary, it may also be a good idea to include:
4. Send messages about particular topics.

topkilla wrote:Subterfuge is to complex to learn quickly. They are going to suck, therefore, dislike the experience.

Doesn't matter. I love golf, even though I am a 18 handicap. There will be some students who enjoy the game, and others that do not. While some may enjoy the game more than others, the goal is not to win or even to play well - it is to use and learn English.

That said, I do agree that getting run over in any game makes the experience less fun, so I would also put some restrictions on the volunteers, things like: not making alliances with other volunteers, not going for early eliminations, etc. I wouldn't tell your students these additional rules, though.

Anyway, I think this is a great idea. Good luck with it.

Well I wouldn't go full in with this idea at first.

I'm currently a student, just over 2 years away from graduating. At my international college, there are a whole heap of different clubs and groups, (mostly run by students only), but also some teacher-run clubs. I don't know how your schools is into clubs and that sort of thing, but I would definite try it out this year by forming some sort of club to test this game and see how it would help with the students' English.

Then, when you have tested it out with a handful of students, well.... if you report back here then I guess we may be able to help you a lot more then. I guess if you think it went well then you could then go ahead and include this as type of assessment with entire year groups (or however classes are grouped in the Netherlands)

To be completely honest with you, Subterfuge has actually (in my own opinion) improved my English a lot too, but probably not in the way you'd expect. You see, about 900 posts ago, I used to really hate writing English essays and doing literary analysis and stuff, and often I would score what a typical disliker-of-English would in these, about 60-70% (which wasn't very good). But I've posted so much stuff on the Subterfuge forums over the past couple of months, that my English (and my debating (thanks TK )) have improved by quite a bit. I'm now scoring near the 80% mark, which is much better. However, I don't really see this being an option for you, as the Subterfuge forums probably have a lot of complex words and also your students might not be interested.

But yeah, that's my opinion

First of all, thanks for the massive amount of feedback. I will try and answer some of your questions & respond to your feedback underneath.

roadkiehl wrote:-How to monitor it?
in-game recording function
-How to assess?
You could also make it an extra-credit assignment or a participation-based grade, maybe?
-How to handle non-Subterfugers?
If you want everyone to participate in Subterfuge, you could try making a couple of games: One for students who want to try, and one for students who couldn't care less, maybe.

I think this is a great idea! I kind of wish my Spanish teacher in high school had done something like this.

Thanks Roady! There is a slight problem though. As far as I know in-game recording is only available for Ios, not for android. Does anyone know if this is true? For instances, on my old & new phone I am not able to record anything..
Participation-based grade would be good indeed, I will discuss it later more in depth regarding TW's post.

nojo34 wrote:I am in high school, so I guess that counts as some form of validation for my opinion. Here are my 2 cents on your idea.
- Does everyone have a phone? If not, you can't do this.
- Every class has those 5-10 people who misbehave, no matter what. They will see this as a chance to goof off and not learn. But this also may trick them into learning English....
- Make them 10 player games, with 9 students and one "admin" from the forums. The admin can help everyone out with the game and English. (I'd be willing to host the private game if there are too many for you to host)

About the phones: yes, everyone does. However, not all of them have 3g/4g on their phones, so they need wifi connection to be able to play. The school I am teaching in does offer wifi, but it's terrible..
It's true what you're saying about misbehaving kids. There are two solutions for this: spread them out or put them all together in one game. Nevertheless I think this can be tackled, and I think most of my students are decent enough to behave a little (at least, I hope )
10 player games --> I will get back to this later on.

topkilla wrote:Don't do it.

• Subterfuge is to complex to learn quickly. They are going to suck, therefore, dislike the experience.
• You only get as much interacting as you put in.
• You can't control how the other people in the game will act. If they get in a game with someone inappropriate, and they don't like you, you will be held accountable.

Thanks for your honest reply TK! I think this can be managed (as is discussed in this topic) by picking the right games or opponents for them. About it's complexity: yes, true. However, I am able to show them a little from the game by short videos before they actually start playing. This way, they will know a bit more about the game.

pandasecret wrote:If you want to go ahead with this project, I recommend you hand-picking private servers with trusted people - ones which will play civil, and encourage the kids to speak to them.
For example, if you're making 10 player games, three of them should be trusted English speakers and seven can be your pupils. Each native English speaker would then ally with two or three pupils and through their communication, fight each other. The pupils should never be on a team on their own, as that does NOT encourage English speaking.
Furthermore, the hand-picked English speakers must also speak in coherent full sentences and avoid slang, contractions, etc.
I for one would volunteer to be one such English speaker.

Great ideas Panda, thanks for thinking about it. This would be a great way for them to learn English, so I agree their should be some (native/good) English speakers in the game. However, I disagree on your opinion about the English speakers needing to be perfect. Whereas I naturally want my pupils to be exposed to perfect written/spoken English, I have experienced myself that seeing English speakers make mistakes gives confidence to talk or write more myself since I know mistakes are allowed to be made and that nobody is perfect. I think it will encourage the ESL students more if they know they are not constantly judged on how they speak or write English.

mm1menace wrote:
First of all, congratulations! Teaching is noble work, and I applaud any and all that aspire to do it, and particularly those who strive to do it better!

Perhaps six of your students play a game with four forum regulars, as a starting point.

That said, I do agree that getting run over in any game makes the experience less fun, so I would also put some restrictions on the volunteers, things like: not making alliances with other volunteers, not going for early eliminations, etc. I wouldn't tell your students these additional rules, though.

Anyway, I think this is a great idea. Good luck with it.

Thanks Menace! Appreciate whay you're saying! Putting restrictions on volunteers would be a great idea, however, if some of the students grasp the tactics of the game, they are still able to eliminate other players (but yeah, that's a part of the game as well). Nevertheless, I think it would be a good idea, so thanks!

tw2000 wrote:Well I wouldn't go full in with this idea at first.

I'm currently a student, just over 2 years away from graduating. At my international college, there are a whole heap of different clubs and groups, (mostly run by students only), but also some teacher-run clubs. I don't know how your schools is into clubs and that sort of thing, but I would definite try it out this year by forming some sort of club to test this game and see how it would help with the students' English.

Then, when you have tested it out with a handful of students, well.... if you report back here then I guess we may be able to help you a lot more then. I guess if you think it went well then you could then go ahead and include this as type of assessment with entire year groups (or however classes are grouped in the Netherlands)

But I've posted so much stuff on the Subterfuge forums over the past couple of months

Teacher-run clubs are not common in the Netherlands, so that won't really work. It would be better to start with participation-based groups within the classes to see if this game appeals to them and if they actually start talking English. Games of 8/10 players with about 3 forum regulars in them would be great! Starting with one game is for the best I guess, so I will speak to some colleagues this week to see how they feel about a project like this. I don't have my own classes yet (officially), so I can't decide for myself yet.
The forums won't work TW, but thanks for the idea

So I will discuss this idea with some of my colleagues and then get back to you. I think it's best to start with a testing game with some of the students I select, so that they can give me some feedback as well as the forumers who want to play with these kids!
(Btw, I have never posted such a long post lol, it has taken me 30 minutes to write this post haha!)

I wouldn't mind participating in one of these "cultural exchange" games, depending on when they are played.

Its a really great idea . I wish I could help but I barely can speak English myself .
Well good luck .

PS: I have learned so many things here , for instance Im a really hilarious guy (Im so humble) in Farsi but Im a loser here . The greatest thing that I learned here , is Its about more than just grammer and vocabularies .

*I actually think roadkheil is indeed hilarious.