Game in the EFL Classroom

Game in the classroom can stimulate students. The Classroom atmosphere will be more relax, and the students will be more attract to the lesson in the classroom. But, game only used by most of teachers to be a brainstorm activities or else to warm up the students, before goes to the main activity. Yet, Lestari (2009) proposes game as main activity. It is because, language classroom atmosphere should be in the condition of students can produce target language as means of communication. Teacher-fronted classroom is not suitable for language learning classroom. As Lestari (2009) states an English classroom, therefore, should be a lively one in which students have the chance to practice the language they are learning, and the teacher is the one who facilitates the learning process. In playing game, students also learn the language, plus to motivate and to encourage students. These are some games, proposes by Lestari (2009) that teacher can use in the classroom as main activity:

1.  Planning a Day Out (Taken from Hadfield, 1984)

Type of activity : Pair work - Information Gap
Function practice : asking about opening and closing time
Exponent : What's on ... tonight?
                    What times does .. open/close/start/finish?
Lexical areas : times, public building and facilities.
Essential vocabulary: museum, market, art gallery, library, shopping centre, theatre,
cinema, days, times
How to use the game:
Copy a role-card and a map for every student in the class.
The students should sit in pairs facing each other across a table.
Give each student an appropriate role-card and a map.
Student A has a list of things to do and see on a visit to York.
Student B has a guide to entertainment and facilities in York.
The object of the game is for student A to find out what the possibilities are and to plan the day.
To do this, student A must ask student B for information about opening/closing/starting/ finishing times of the shops, museums, plays in York, in order to decide what can and can-not be done in the time available.
Student A must draw in a route of the day's wanderings on the map.
It is Tuesday 4 December.
You are going to York for the day.
You arrive at 9.30 am.
The last train home leaves at 22.35.
You want to:
visit the castle
This game is not designed for Indonesian EFL, it is better to adapt it according the student's need also the competence of the students. Also the teacher can modify the game according the geographical location in the one's own city.

2. Riddles

Type of activity:  -making the familiar strange audience and contest guessing
Function practiced:  -describing objects
Useful language: -has/have/has got/have got, adjectives for physical description; simple present; when ..., if ...; feels/smells/tastes/sounds/looks like
Lexical areas  -adjectives for colour, texture, shape, size, length, weight, pattern, materials, etc.
How to use the activity
Do this activity with groups of three or four.
Take or copy of the Riddles sheet for each group, and enough copies of the object cards for there to be three or four for each group.
Cut up the object-cards and put them in a hat or bag.
Cut the answers off the Riddles sheet, then hand out the Riddles sheets to the
groups and ask them to try and work out what is being described in each riddle.
Introduce a few 'home-made' riddles, e.g.:
1. This is a cyndrical object made of white paper. It is full of dead leaves.
(cigarette)
2. A round golden object with a hole in the middle. (ring)
3. It an tell you things, hut it is not a teacher. It can wake you up, but it is not your
wife. It has aface, but it is not human. (alarm clock)
4. It is made of wood and has many leaves, but it is not a tree. (book) Now hand
out around the object cards. Each group should take three or four. The group should
work together to produce riddles, describing objects they have picked, but not
mentioning the names.
When they have finished, from the students into new groups so that each new group
has one member from each of the old groups.
The students in the new group should take in turns to read their riddles to each
other and try to guess the answers.

More, you can take from Hadfield. Later on I will discuss about Modified Jeopardy Game.

Source
Lestari, Lies Amin. (2009). English Classroom Culture: How can it be done? TEFLIN Journal, 10(1)

RangeR (2)

Have I told you about RangeR? Now I can tell, Ranger is a community in which I'm freely join to expand my horizons. I got knowledge also friends in return. I wasted my time in gathering, laughing, chit chat about many problems. This year, we are having many gathering times, in several events. 

First, in June, we did particular job together, fun job absolutely. We taught our junior about how giving material in initiation ceremony. Yeah, some materials about leadership, characters, and other things we must have when we already a mahasiswa. Hahaha

Minus ranger merah (mas dhika) do'i nya lagi bobok

Again, we met in charity event held by students association. We did some photo shoot again, haha. We discuss some matters, joking around, yeah, all we did is having fun while we still have time together. We also did minor meeting, with no special purposes. We just met in the campus or spent night together in one's house. Just happened, in Mas dhika's house, we stay in his musholaa. haha. 

At last, our official meeting happened, we all gathered in the holly ceremony (lol, don't be overdosed please!) in which we do the initiation ceremony for the new students. After that, we visited mas bayu's house. We took a rest there, and finally went back to surabaya.  

we are family (katanyaaa)

Ingin PKKMB lagi

Unesa, Universitas Negeri Surabaya begitu kepanjangannya. Tak banyak yang mengetahui PTN satu ini, dia lebih terkenal dengan sebutan IKIP Surabaya. Ya, memang dulu adalah IKIP. Sebagai salah satu PTN penggodog calon guru, saya rasa atmosfer penggodogan itu memang begitu terasa. Ilmu menjadi guru, Classroom Discourse, Assessment, Instructional Design, saya lahap habis semuanya. Tak lupa Ilmu Bahasa; Linguistics, Semantics, Pragmatics sudah tamat pula. Juga ilmu skill mulai listening hingga Writing. Serta Ilmu menjadi peneliti; Research Statistics, English Research Methodology sudah saya tahbiskan. Tapi saya merasa masih ada esensi yang kurang dari gelar saya sebagai mahasiswa (Saya belum bachelor lho ya, hehe).

RangeR

Ranger can be anything. Ranger can be character of hero from children program on television. Ranger can be a real hero who save forest and animal from extinction. But, for me, ranger is my... let me think of it first. 

First, RangeR consists of my friends. They are all have one mission. Not only from my batch, they are my senior and my junior. But, we were having good time talking about something. Something we care about. But, until now, I don't feel they are my family. 

Welcome to Sixth Hell, Oops..

Welcome to Sixth hell, Ah, I mean Semester. Welcome to sixth semester. Well, I have no intention to write about how hard it will be. Because this is only a month to go. I felt on fire at first meeting, because I met new lecturers. Not really new lecturers but I have never been taught by them. There was Mr. Mun**r, who is really demanding, yet a professional one. I like the way he explained the materials, but some other time he was really annoying. He was organized and really a detailed person. He loved checking and analyzing. He loved numbers certainly.