Gamification: Finding a Way out...

Gamification is the application of game elements in non-gaming situations, often to motive or influence behavior. Game here is including 'a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation' according to the game designer Jane McGonigal. It can be used in classrooms to motivate students and get students more involved. 

According to the passage A Comparison of Computer Game and Language-Learning Task Design Using Flow Theory, gamification can create an interesting task-based task for students. It can make the activity either too rigid or too easy. 

I've played Phantasy Quest twice and it's really hard for me. I don't play games because I think the games are waste of time. After trying again and again, I felt frustrated. This game is not easy and players need to find tiny distinctions and make multiple connections with those objects  and how them works. I failed many times and I had to refer to the walkthrough. Finally, with the help of the walk through I finally got the girl back. 

For language skills that this game may achieve, I think first is the reading ability. For example, when I tried to get on the boat, I almost clicked every part of the picture and I found some words that I didn't know like 'mask' and I checked the dictionary to find out it's meaning. Thus, this game can enhance the ability of understanding rules and directions. Secondly, this game can also enhance writing and speaking ability. Teacher can let students write or talk about how they play the game. Also, teacher can teach ways of describing activities first and let students write or talk about their own walkthroughs. 

Regarding activities, students can be assigned in groups to solve this problem. These groups can including different roles and students can collaborates with each other on either play the game or write the walkthrough. Also, students can communicate with each other on the activities they made in the game. 

The teacher may provide some scaffolding like how to describe the directions, how to use proper verbs to describe activities and also some unfamiliar words. Also, the teacher can assign different roles within groups and make teamwork runs smoothly.

I would use both ways. By using walk through, higher proficiency level students may benefit a lot but when play with some lower proficiency level students I would first provide the text and then the images.

In terms of assessing the objectives, I would assign another similar game and let the students write or speak the procedures that they use to complete the game.