Board Games As Tools to Foster a Communicative Environment in Clil Classrooms
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Universidad de Oviedo Facultad de Formación del Profesorado y Educación Trabajo Fin del Máster en Enseñanza Integrada de la Lengua Inglesa y Contenidos: Educación Infantil y Primaria BOARD GAMES AS TOOLS TO FOSTER A COMMUNICATIVE ENVIRONMENT IN CLIL CLASSROOMS Lorenzo Rodríguez Rivero Tutoras: Gabriela García Teruel Marta Ramón García Julio 2016 Universidad de Oviedo Facultad de Formación del Profesorado y Educación Trabajo Fin del Máster en Enseñanza Integrada de la Lengua Inglesa y Contenidos: Educación Infantil y Primaria BOARD GAMES AS TOOLS TO FOSTER A COMMUNICATIVE ENVIRONMENT IN CLIL CLASSROOMS Lorenzo Rodríguez Rivero Tutoras: Gabriela García Teruel Marta Ramón García Julio 2016 INDEX ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................................... i 1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 1 2. CLIL REALITY ........................................................................................................................... 3 2.1. HOW IS CLIL APPLIED IN SCHOOL? ................................................................................... 3 2.2. THE CLIL CLASSROOM AS A COMMUNICATIVE ENVIRONMENT ...................................... 4 2.3. GAMES AS A TOOL FOR CLIL CLASSROOMS ..................................................................... 7 2.4. THE CLIL MATRIX: KEY ASPECTS OF BOARD GAMES AS CLIL TOOLS ................................ 8 3. BOARD GAMES AND CLIL INSTRUCTION .......................................................................... 18 3.1. WHAT IS A BOARD GAME? ............................................................................................. 18 3.2. A PROPOSED CLASSIFICATION: ANALYSIS OF THE MECHANISMS OF BOARD GAMES ................................................................................................................. 18 3.3. TWO FORESHADOWING EXPERIENCES .......................................................................... 27 4. A PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE: USING A BOARD GAME AS A TOOL TO ENHANCE COMMUNICATION IN A CLIL CLASSROOM ........................................................................... 30 4.1. CONTEXT FOR THE EXPERIENCE ..................................................................................... 30 4.2. THE ADAPTATION ........................................................................................................... 31 4.3. THE GAME: PREHISTORIC MAYHEM! ............................................................................. 34 4.4. THE RESULTS .................................................................................................................. 36 4.5. THE BOARD GAME AGAINST THE CLIL MATRIX .............................................................. 40 5. CONCLUSIONS ...................................................................................................................... 45 REFERENCES .................................................................................................................... 48 REVIEWED LITERATURE .................................................................................................. 49 APENDIX 1: A SEPARATE COPY OF THE CLASSIFICATION TABLE OF PAGE 26 ................ 50 APENDIX 2: CLASSIFICATION ACCORDING TO THE PROPOSED AGE OF ALL THE MENTIONED GAMES (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE) ....................................................... 51 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Every piece of work is always responsibility of more than one person. This text in specific was written with the enormous help of my supervisors: Marta Ramón and Gabriela García. To Marta I owe the extra hours in the correction of the grammar, syntax and many other linguistic and paralinguistic elements this text would lack if not for her analytic eye; her support and several meetings also gave me the strength to finish in time. To Gabriela I owe the gigantic ideas and proposals which fill this text; although my first plan was interesting, she managed to infuse this work with theoretical backup and provided many possible paths to develop it further. Both of them tried their best to give this work a proper structure and presentation. Therefore, all the probable remaining mistakes are mine. Every piece of work has a support team behind the writer, as well. To them, my parents, who constantly checked my progress and helped me through the tougher times. To my sister, for not believing in the bilingual system and always complaining about English classes, she holds responsibility for me being here. To my friend Mario Vega, for being the one who re-opened the world of board games to me, he is also responsible for many of the ideas contained within this work. To my friends at the Escolanía San Salvador choir, who, one way or the other, directed me towards the path of teaching and gave me the passion I have for music and learning. To my colleagues of the Master’s in CLIL, who demonstrated that there are good, passionate and interesting people in the field of teaching, with ideas and initiative to improve the system in which we believe. And, finally, to the two teachers that showed me what Education was about: my 6th grade Primary Education teacher, Manuel Ángel, and the founder and conductor of the Escolanía, don Alfredo de la Roza. All these people are the ones who help me to believe in myself and encourage me to work every day. For them this text is written: one of my first acts to try to improve the world we live in. Thank you. In a final note: as this field is constantly evolving and new methods and ideas arise every day, I always come to re-read my work. If you find any mistakes or you wish to inform me or have a chat around some of the ideas of this work, contact me in: . Thank you. i 1. INTRODUCTION Board games have existed since the dawn of civilization (Ancient Egyptians, for example, played Senet; in the Middle Ages, Chess was introduced into the Western society; and dice originally were made of knuckle bones and stones that can be found all around the globe). However, since the 1980s there has been a boom of creativity, with hundreds of new games published each year, ever more complex and more strategy- and interaction-related. Contexts of play have also widened, from family and friendly reunions to public settings like tournaments, conventions, and, especially for our purposes, the classroom. Traditional games (those existing before this boom, like Chess and Checkers) are often used in education in one way or another. The classic games (those created in the twentieth century before or around the 80s, like Chutes and Ladders, and Monopoly) are nowadays the most known board games but they are not used in education. We believe these new games have multiple possibilities for education. Games in general are a form of entertainment built into the culture of a society. Through games, children learn customs and behaviours of the adult world. Like rhymes and songs, games are a means of transmission of culture. In particular, the mechanisms of tabletop games enhance interaction and, therefore, communication; they are mini-worlds were players can practise social skills and develop successful strategies to build relationships and learn efficient communication. However, as some of these games are too complex for non-gamers, board games are sometimes set aside and disregarded as possible tools for education. Still, we believe that they can be implemented in school practice with a little guidance. They are easily analysed and adapted to any age, and are fun. Our main thesis is that they foster a relaxing environment where the foreign language is practised naturally. To analyse and use these games, we previously have to analyse the language learning situation in schools, in particular, bilingual education in Spain. In 2006, bilingual systems were implemented in Spanish schools. Later on, in 2010, the main guidelines of CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) were published by the main developers of this approach: Do Coyle, Phillip Hood, and David Marsh (Coyle et al., 2010). In between these years, the practice of CLIL in schools had been intuitive and very little theoretically based. This situation led to a poorly developed approach that is sometimes considered inefficient. In this sense, this work provides a succinct analysis on the weak points of CLIL application in Spanish schools and how games can help develop a successful CLIL programme. 1 CLIL does not need new tools and innovative techniques to be efficient. On the contrary, the only considerations the CLIL developers include within their book are related to language and content integration and to the didactic applications of the approach. In that sense, we provide a brief analysis of the 4Cs Framework and the CLIL matrix in order to extract the main pedagogical points of CLIL and how games can be a tool to enhance them. This work is divided into three sections. In the first, we develop the aforementioned analysis of the situation of CLIL in Spain and the main characteristics of this approach. In the second, we provide an analysis of the characteristics of tabletop games; we propose a table to help teachers adapt any game to their students’ ages; and finally we review the possibilities of board games for language learning and education in general. In the third and last epigraph, we present an experience developed in a school and an assessment of the benefits the board game provided. 2 2. CLIL REALITY 2.1. HOW