Marmara Elt Resources

The most important reason for teaching English to children by means of this old scouting game is that it is an out-of-class activity. In consequence it guarantees all the benefits outdoor education: contact with nature, freedom, physical activity on the one hand and, on the other, autonomous and collaborative learning, peer tutoring and learning through play. What is more, learning a language is meaningful - you need the linguistic resources to play and win; language education is cross-curricular - the knowledge of mathematics, nature and many many others (not discussed in this article because its format cannot accommodate for all the possible task samples) is as necessary as your ability to understand the foreign language; language learning is experiential in both meanings of the term - children learn by bodily-awareness as well as relying on their own experience. And finally, in spite of all the theory-philosophy foundations, learning English through orienteering is still enormous fun. For learners and teachers alike.

Here’s a useful tool to assist in the learning of a new language or just communicating with people around the world in different languages. It’s called Meglobe, it is a web based instant messaging (IM) application that also performs language translations.

It’s very easy to use, just type in your own langauge and Meglobe will translate your message into the language of whoever you are chatting with. I recently had an opportunity to test Meglobe with an uncle in Mexico who I’ve never spoken to because of my poor Spanish and his almost non existent English skills.

My initial impression was that we were going to have some trouble communicating because of the poor translation quality you normally get with Machine Translation (MT) products but actually I was impressed. There were only a couple times when some of the translations didn’t look quite right but when that happened we used Meglobes contribution feature to make some quick edits to the translations. Since the UI is very crisp and easy to use and there’s nothing that needs to be done in order to use the translation features my uncle didn’t have any problems using Meglobe the first time out.

You can take a look at: www.meglobe.com

Why Use Games to Teach English?
‘Language learning is hard work … Effort is required at every moment and must be maintained over a long period of time. Games help and encourage many learners to sustain their interest and work.’
‘Games also help the teacher to create contexts in which the language is useful and meaningful. The learners want to take part and in order to do so must understand what others are saying or have written, and they must speak or write in order to express their own point of view or give information.’

‘The need for meaningfulness in language learning has been accepted for some years. A useful interpretation of ‘meaningfulness‘ is that the learners respond to the content in a definite way. If they are amused, angered, intrigued or surprised the content is clearly meaningful to them. Thus the meaning of the language they listen to, read, speak and write will be more vividly experienced and, therefore, better remembered.
If it is accepted that games can provide intense and meaningful practice of language, then they must be regarded as central to a teacher’s repertoire. They are thus not for use solely on wet days and at the end of term!’ (from Introduction, p. 1)

*From ‘Games for Language Learning’
by Andrew Wright, David Betteridge and Michael Buckby
Cambridge University Press, 1984.

As video and other digital media compose a large portion of the time students spend interacting with varied images and sounds, we are beginning to see a parallel development in the number of studies looking into how these might affect language learning. However, no specific studies were found which investigated actual language acquisition benefit from video production.

Many second language teachers and programs include elements of video production in their lessons. Recently, with the advent of digital technology, camcorders have become cheaper, smaller, and simpler to use. Free or reasonably priced editing software can arrange even the crudest video footage into a finished product that students and teachers can be proud of. Narration and music can be added in a controlled manner. Visual images can be enhanced with transition effects or other creative techniques. Teachers and students willing to invest the time can create very enjoyable productions for relatively little expense.
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