Language Games: : Innovative Activities for Teaching English

ESOL teachers use language games to increase motivation, provide authentic and meaningful language practice, increase student engagement, and infuse the classroom with fun.

This volume describes a variety of innovative games used today in language classrooms around the globe, reflecting different contexts and cultures. Chapters in this book demonstrate how both theory and practice inform our teaching approaches. Though some of the games focus primarily on the four traditional language skills, reading, writing, listening, and speaking, as well as the supporting areas of vocabulary and grammar, other games clearly have a different emphasis, such as critical thinking and content-based language instruction. Yet other chapters focus on objectives such as getting acquainted, or provide ideas for game templates that teachers can adapt for various purposes and types of content. This book stands apart in that the contributions reflect multiple classroom uses. Themes evident throughout the volume reflect pedagogical goals and practices for language learning, such as communicative competence, interaction, authenticity, skills integration, content emphasis, and collaboration.

Maureen Snow Andrade is an associate professor and department chair at Brigham Young University Hawaii, in the United States, where she teaches ESL and courses in teaching ESOL. Maureen is also editor of the TESL Reporter. Her professional interests include English for academic purposes, content-based language instruction, program assessment, and adjustment issues for international students.

Maria Dantas-Whitney is Professor of ESOL and Bilingual Education at Western Oregon University. She has been a Fulbright scholar in Mexico and Panama and has directed professional development programs for K-12 teachers of ELLs in Oregon. She has served as president of Oregon TESOL and ORATE (Oregon Association for Teacher Educators). She is the recipient of the AERA Outstanding Dissertation Award in Second Language Research and the TESOL/College Board Award for Teacher as Classroom Researcher. Her publications and presentations focus on linguistically and culturally responsive pedagogy in teacher education, critical reflective practice, and classroom ethnography.

Sarah Rilling is an associate professor in the Department of English at Kent State University where she teaches courses in applied linguistics and administers teaching English as a second/additional language programs. Her research focuses on inquiry and action in language teaching and nativization processes in modern language contact.

Lilia Savova is the MA TESOL program coordinator at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She is also past chair of the TESOL Teacher Education Interest Section and one of the founders of the TESOL Graduate Student Forum (GSF), which is a one-day mini-conference preceding the TESOL Convention. Under her guidance, IUP students have hosted the GSF for three years.Her scholarly work includes the publication of ESOL student and teacher materials, ESOL books and articles, presentations at national and international fora, and invited lectures. She was guest editor of the TESOL Journal's special issue on teacher education. Her research and pedagogical interests are shaped by her extensive international ESOL experience.