Using flash games for ESL Teaching

[msmiller36]

Hey everyone. I'm a bit new here but I wanted to hop right away to asking a question of you all.
I have a new job as an assistant language teacher at a Japanese high school, and I've been looking at ways to diversify my lessons to make them more engaging for the students. Anything electronic is like cat-nip for these kids, and so far my projector based jeopardy games have been one of the more successful tools in class.

A bit of a muse came to me though, and I wondered if I could integrate flash games to help me teach. IE one idea: A game where you had to lead your character around maze-like areas and avoid traps. I think a game like this could teach them things like 'up, down, left, right, upstairs, downstairs, be careful, go straight,' etc. IE they'd tell me where to go and I'd follow their instructions, and then let some of the kids play as well upon queues from their teammates/classmates.

But I wanted to get a sampling of any ideas that you all might have. Can anyone think of any good flash games (and possible corresponding language key points <removed>) that could help inspire these charming little buggers?

[pjt33]

Is Flash important or are you more interested in minigames in general? For example, I know that there's a Python re'nai game community, and you might find some useful stuff on social interaction. If you're interested I can try to dig out a URL or two.

[CrOtALiTo]

I believe that you can use the website as flash and well, just you can write in notes the new words learnt during the process, if you need help with something please you don't hesitate to ask us.

[benscratch]

(My name is Ben. I studied Spanish for just one year as part of a Modern Languages with Education degree course at Sheffield University a fair few years ago. I'm interested in this forum because I am working with a client in the US to promote her Spanish teaching resources. So I would like to get insight into what challenges people face when teaching Spanish, particularly to preschool / kindergarten kids and toddlers.)

One of the products that my client, <removed>, offers is Flash-based storybooks. They're not games, but allow you to switch between Spanish/English on any page. You get colourful cartoons, text and audio read by a native speaker. I've been through the books, and they're fun.

I think games could work really well for repetition, though. If you did have the "up-down-left-right" being read out to you aurally, it would really strengthen the pathways for specific vocabulary, and would be much more fun than learning by rote.

Best wishes,
Ben

[Tomisimo]

(My name is Ben. I studied Spanish ...

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