Humanistic Teaching

An approach to learning English

The Lion Game is/was one of my early attempts at making a non-competitive game. I'm not going to recreate it here. You can follow the link if you would like to know how it works. It features an idea that is interesting but flawed. The idea of the Lion Game was to help a baby explorer escape from four coloured lions. It featured two special dice. The idea was to ask a question or set some simple task. If the students got the right answer they got the "good dice" which favoured the explorer. If they got answer wrong or failed to do the task they got the "bad dice" which favoured the lions. As I write this I'm finding it hard not to wince.

The game is in effect nothing more than a glorified test - a test with gamy bits tacked on. Anyone who has read more than a little of the stuff I've written will know that I abhor testing. I think language acquisition requires an open, playful, curious, energetic frame of mind. This is far, far removed from notions of right and wrong. The more we start focusing on getting a result, getting the answer right, the more we are making learning mechanical. The more we are making it hard work.

The Lion Game tries to avoid competition by putting all the players on the same side. But the way it did so was artificial. When I used it, some children, usually boys, would want the lions to catch the baby. They could even end up deliberately getting questions wrong so as to get the lion dice. This could be mitigated by allowing players who got an answer correct to choose the dice. The teacher could then give the unwanted dice to the players if the y made a mistake. This restored the game balance but did nothing to remove the focus from the idea of getting the right answer.

I think the idea of getting the right answer is fairly common with Language games. If language is the focus of the game then it can be unavoidable. Consider a simple race track made out of flashcards. Players roll a dice and advance a marker (or markers if they are competing against each other) to a new space. Failure to identify the flashcard or create an acceptable sentence using it sends the marker back to where it came. It can be argued that the desire to win the game will spur players to greater efforts. I'm not convinced. It may for some players. Though for others getting it wrong may lead to an erosion of confidence. But perhaps my greater concern is that it reinforces what I think is a negative unhealthy way of thinking. It engenders a lack of compassion. Or this notion of right and wrong and mistakes and errors is unjoyful. I'm struggling with words here.

I do think there is a difference between punishing or penalising mistakes and requiring correct answers. For example, with the race track game one could require a player to name a number of cards matching the dice roll. The player would advance as far as the dice roll indicated or until the player couldn't name a card. This would turn the focus a little bit more upon what the player knew rather than picking at the mistake or lack of knowledge. It still doesn't do much for the spirit.

I'm sure I'll be struggling to express what I'm getting at again but what I really wanted to focus on with this post was the idea of using different dice. Somewhere in the back of my mind is a game using several dice where an important part of the game strategy is deciding which dice to use depending upon the game situation. There's a nice little article about unusual dice here. The games I make often rely on special dice to make them work. Making them can be a nuisance. One way of avoiding the trouble can be to use a table and assign results to the number rolled. Results can be presented in words or as pictures. If the words or pictures are on cards then the table can be altered as the game goes on. This idea has just popped into my head. I feel a new game coming on.

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