Name: Salik Ansari

Guide: Prof. Alka Hingorani

Course: Visual Communication

Credits: LETS (Learning English Through Stories), Tata project

Can game play aid structural understanding of language

A traditional classroom environment doesn’t provide much scope for teachers to try different ways of teaching. The population of students and lack of availability of designed materials which would work for both teachers and students are some of the major constraints. When it comes to learning a second language, the situation is even worse.

The project ‘can game-play aid structural understanding of language’ aims at facilitating ways of learning and teaching structural English (grammar) in a traditional classroom environment, where English is a second language.

The topic chosen in the grammar teaching is tensed, and the idea is to design a pedagogy that works for both teachers and students. The developed method (pedagogy) begins with a card game that facilitates pattern learning within tenses.

This is followed by a classroom activity designed to reinforce the acquired pattern. The third, and final, part of the design is a planned lesson (Instructional design) to communicate the meaning of the overall concept.

A series of experiments were conducted with a group of 18 students of standards 6th and 7th, and the designed materials were tested, improved, then evaluated on the basis of qualitative results of those experiments.

The project consist of a Teaching Manual containing all the details and steps necessary to follow in conducting the entire pedagogy. The whole pedagogy is a 3 step process that starts with a card game followed by a classroom activity and the last classroom teaching. All 3 steps has been materialized differently in terms of their format but are connected through one single strategy to achieve a specific goal.

For acquiring a second language it is important for the learner’s mind to get familiar with the syntax and its construction (pattern), the card game facilitates pattern learning in this case and classroom activity helps in reinforcing the pattern. By going through step 1 and step 2 the learner’s mind is prepared for understanding the whole concept.
If meaning is taught in the first step, the mind translates patterns into mother language, this inbuilt translative tendency of mind act as a barrier in acquiring syntax.