Teachers in the StarTalk Program create Chinese language games that engage students

June 29, 4:28 PMSF Education Games ExaminerJoanna Szeto

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The StarTalk Program helps teachers implement best practices in teaching Chinese
as a second language.

Teachers participating in San Francisco State University’s StarTalk Program this summer create Chinese language games that engage even the most reluctant student. StarTalk focuses on second language acquisition and best practices in the teaching of Chinese.

Teachers attended two weeks of workshops on instructional strategies, reading and literacy, storytelling, children's literature, Comic Life and podcasting.  The result was two days of practicum where teams of teachers presented their 50 minute lessons to a group of middle school students.

Heritage learners have the hardest time keeping their own language. They want to fit in, while facing high expectations from everyone that they should speak their native language perfectly. Therefore, heritage learners are sometimes one of the most reluctant learners. But even the normally reluctant students were engaged in the games.

Below are the six games that can be adapted to play with friends, family, or students in any language class. They all contain the two characteristics that make language learning games work.

First they must have comprehensible input. And second they must be interesting.
Stephen Krashen says we acquire language when we understand it. That is comprehensible input. We also learn something if we are interested. To have one without the other means there is little or no language learning.

At school there is comprehensible input but low interest. In the world there is high interest, but little comprehensible input. On the rare occasion when you have both comprehensible input and high interest, these are the lessons that you remember years later.

Six language games that will engage students:

1. Charades
2. Look and Find
3. Chopsticks Matching
4. Lightning Cards
5. Pictionary
6. Sort and Speak

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