In this article, I will give you some advice on how to customise an RPG for your own English language classroom. It is a map-making, story-telling and community-discussion game. To play it, it suggests players and hours; these figures are very flexible though. You can play with a larger group, or even play two games at once from the same instructions provided by the teacher. The game can be spread over multiple sessions, or you can play for an hour and leave it unfinished without it being unsatisfying.
The players decide where this community lives, and then draw a basic map of the area — is it a tropical island? A remote alpine village? U-Bahn Alexanderplatz? Next, they decide what resources they have in abundance and what resources are scarce. Shelter might be abundant in an U-Bahn station, but sunlight is scarce.
For example:. The players discuss these issues, add details to the map if necessary, and move on to the next turn. They used a range of grammar to discuss previous sessions, results of the in-game events and plans for future sessions, and they also had to manage interpersonal skills to organise their group roles and decision-making process.
All of this was done in English, and each week I could guide the discussion to cover a particular grammar point — discussing in-world achievements using the present perfect. I used this game as open practise at the end of a session, spending about 30 minutes playing through it while I asked the group questions or encouraged discussion to elicit relevant grammar and vocabulary. Look out for a future article on the game Lasers and Feelings!
See me — Ed. If you enjoyed this article, you may also be interested in graphic facilitation for English teachers. Following the traditional path of discovering Rammstein, Kraftwerk and Run Lola Run as a teenager, Kit has dreamed of living in Germany ever since. Finally making the move in January , he now works here as a freelance English teacher by day and by night enjoys reading, writing and weeping into books of German grammar.
