After chatting with Alisha, Bianca, Sam, & Sherri on Tuesday, my mind is pretty much on overload with the all of the possibilities gaming brings to the ESL classroom. Obvs it’s not new research (CALL does a lot with gaming these days), but I’ve always felt on the outside of that conversation because I don’t self-identify as a “Gamer” and could never really figure out how something my parents fought over could have educational benefits beyond building thumb dexterity. Thankfully, that’s starting to shift.

I’m highly interested in the endless possibilities gaming brings to SLA and what exactly that looks like: Learning vocabulary, interacting in a new social discourse, building audience awareness, analyzing rhetorical devices, negotiating meaning, etc. I’d like to see what having an ESL composition classroom with a certain genre of games or a game as a theme for an entire semester does for their writing and language skills. Since I didn’t know Dungeons and Dragons was a originally a paper game (don’t judge me too harshly), I especially favor the idea of scaffolding from a paper/board version to a system version of a game for a semester – but I’m not opposed to just tossing them in (that’s literally how I learned to swim) and seeing where the struggle takes us (I didn’t die). Since I am new to this gaming world, and am trying my hand at playing some myself, I can certainly see the possible frustrations that ESL students are likely to experience when trying to navigate a world that doesn’t bend quite as easily to our rule of thumb; I can also imagine the lively conversations, descriptive pieces of writings, and the leaps in learning that are possible from stepping out of one’s comfort zone.

The biggest worry I have, honestly, would be transfer and finding clear-cut objectives that demonstrate the benefits of such a class to my students.