Hi all!
My name is James and I teach English as a foreign language at a university just outside of Tokyo. My curriculum is not centered on any specific game, but board games. Mainly social deduction and cooperative games.
I use games as a core activity in my context, but supplement and expect learners to do much more than just play the game. A typical 8 - 10 weeks of classes looks like this:
Week 1: Research which game you'd like to play from those on my game list.
Week 2: Present your research findings to the whole class (share game knowledge) and make a gaming group
Week 3: Learn how to play your chosen game
Week 4: Play the game, recording your play session audio, then transcribe the audio as homework.
Week 5: Analyze the transcription (correct English mistakes, translate Japanese into English) and mine YouTube gameplay videos for useful expressions
Week 6: Replay the game, record audio, and transcribe.
Week 7: Compare the two transcriptions looking for improvements. Create a presentation "wrap up" of your experiences with the game.
Week 8 - 10: Create a digital artifact (video, word doc) that can be given to future players of the game explaining how to play, an example of gameplay, a transcription, or review of the game.
In this sense, any game could be used, but as improving their production skills is a focus of the class, I have tried to stick with social deduction and cooperative games, as these games require learners to speak and converse as they play, which allows for the transcription and analysis activities.
I can go into much more detail and provide worksheets for each step if people are interested. In the meantime, there's a lot of info already over on my blog.
Look forward to engaging with you all.
James
Thanks for sharing! Using board games is also something I've wanted to do more of in my classroom. I'll definitely be checking out your blog.