Plants vs. Zombies vs. EFL Lesson Design

Every so often, I download a game into our family iPad for my kids to play. I do it as a kind of reward. But that’s not all. You see, I actually want my kids to play games–for a number of reasons that I have terrible difficulty articulating effectively to my wife. I began to form this opinion a few years ago when I read James Paul Gee’s book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. In it he builds a strong case for the ability of games to facilitate thinking and learning and literacy (36 ways, to be specific). Another book, Don’t  Bother Me Mom, I’m Learning, by Marc Prensky, helped push along the heresy. It is a little over the top and a lot less academic, but it does score a few points. And other books, articles, websites, and TED talks byJane McGonigal and others have mostly convinced me that games not only can be good, but generally are pretty good. But I seem to be in the minority in the world of education and parents.

The common wisdom is that games are bad. This develops no doubt from the news media’s habit of mentioning games in connection with ax murders, tragic accidents and lives gone astray. And from the fear parents have that time on games is time not on homework, homework that is–that must be–more important because it was assigned by a professional teacher at an authorized institution. Well, I can’t deny that those teachers have the power to give my kids grades, and that they are doing what they probably think is best, carrying on with ineffective relics of teaching culture in the face of bored learners and growing mountains of exciting alternatives, but I would like everyone to stop for a moment and question their choice of materials and their approach. The world of games has evolved into a highly-disciplined,  focused field. Game designers  know what they are doing, make no mistake. They generally know it better–and do it better–than teachers, who should be (but often aren’t) professional learning designers. Ah, you are skeptical, I sense. Well, a serious look at the structure and techniques used in good games can make you believe, I believe. In fact, I want teachers to look at and learn from games, and that is really the purpose of this post.

On a recent trip to Miyazaki, I found myself with only my wi-fi-only iPad; and the only wi-fi available was  in the lobby, but it was only for Softbank subscribers. The local Tully’s offered loads of wi-fi services for subscribers to any of those services, which I am not. So I was beyond the internet and had a few hours to kill. In desperation, I turned to the games in the ipad and tapped one on. Suddenly I found myself the middle of one of my daughter’s unfinished games, and in the midst of a lawn full of attacking zombies and valiantly defending plants. There was nothing to do but take control and fight. So I did. And I lost, overrun by zombies, really soon.

But as I played, several of the design features of the game began to stand out. The game both tickled me and taught me how to play at the same time. I realized that there are elements here that should be built into EFL lessons–or  any lessons. Play the game for a while and see if you don’t agree.


The first point is delight. The game delights with its quirkiness. The narrator/guide/salesman is a weird Lemony Snicket sort of fellow who coaches you along and eggs  you on. He tells you how much you are going to hate the next level, for example. He provides some entertainment for the procedural parts of the game. It’s a joke within a joke, a wink from the creators of the game. The heroes of the action are the plants, and that in itself is funny. The last defense of the humans in the house are the plants on the lawn, bravely battling waves of brain-eating zombies. The variety of looks and powers of the plants is pure Pokemon–an ever-expanding jungle of creative diversity. And the zombies! They could have been just grey-brown rotting figures closing in from the left, but again, the designers chose to delight with visual gags and zombie powers that  surprise and entertain and challenge. Seeing them is fun, beating them is fun, and even being beaten by them is fun.

The second point is personalization. Before each zombie attack, you choose the assortment of plants you are going to battle with. This allows you to play with tactical options and see the results. You can play with your favorites, you can develop your own styles of defending or attacking and you can can control your destiny.

The last point I want to make regards flow, and this is where the game has the most to teach us. If you are not familiar with Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s theory, you can experience a wonderful example of it here. You are given a manageable challenge and you experience success right off the bat, even if it is just a little. But it pulls you in. You roll up your sleeves and tap yourself back into the game right away. That balance of challenge and success is really the genius of this game (and most other successful games). When you don’t get it right, you usually almost do. You can learn from your mistakes and you get a chance to do it again. It makes you think metacognitively and gives you immediate feedback. Designing for flow is tricky business, but it is essential for extended learner engagement. Julie Dirksen gives a really nice presentation on it here.

EFL learners are often not any more motivated to learn the language than people are to tap madly at a glass screen for several hours on end. The motivation they are feeling is often the same kind of motivation people feel about having children–yeah, it might be nice someday, somehow…The immediate motivation they are going to feel, I want to say, comes from the way that you make people do things. Once the game is in their hands or the butts are in the classroom seats, the nature of the experience takes over. I didn’t play Plants vs Zombies because I wanted to get good at playing it, but that is what happened because of good game design.

Here is a presentation explaining the success of the game and how the game was developed. It is a great story. The summary of principles at the end are worth considering. They can  be applied to EFL lesson design , I think. They also show the work and craft that game designers put into “lessons”. You’ll have to search long and hard to find the equivalent in EFL text or materials design.

 

LET Kyushu-Okinawa Presentation

On June 9th I was lucky enough to be able to go down to Miyazaki for the 42nd Kyushu-Okinawa Chapter LET Conference held at Miyazaki Municipal University. I had a great time there at the small but interesting conference, meeting up with some old friends and colleagues, and meeting some interesting people.

My presentation was titled Crossing Cultures and Aiding Learning: 105 Years of Treasure Hunting. The whole presentation was recorded for Ustream and is available here. The (abridged) slides are available here. And links for all the tools and websites mentioned in the presentation can be found here.

Many thanks to the organizers of the conference for the interesting content and their kind hospitality.

Untitled (or Ringing Like Bells)

This blog posting is partially untitled for a reason, that reason being that when I went looking for a translation for the term above (shingakkou) I couldn’t find a good one. There is a  Wikipedia entry in Japanese, but no counterparts in other languages. I would like to describe this type of school and complain and contrast a little. I visited one such school last week, an extremely high level shingakkou, the kind that many parents and many cram schools spend an awful amount of time and money trying to get kids into. I observed an English lesson. And let me state plainly that I was impressed. But I was impressed in the same way that a you might be impressed by a particularly gory and disturbing news  image if you make the mistake of clicking on it while browsing. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First let me try to explain what a shingakkou is. I’ll start by providing  a translation for the definition for the one in Japanese on the Wikipedia  page: They are a category of school that places high priority on matriculating graduates into higher level universities (or high schools, or junior highs). By higher, I mean academically more widely accepted as being higher in level than other similar types of schools. The focus is always on that next level of school and the narrow, insidious exams that function as gatekeepers. The students obsess over exams, and so do their teachers, and their juku cram school teachers, and their parents, and the the administrations of the schools. Everyone is obsessing over tests and how to best prepare these young people to succeed on these tests.

Many of the learners in the class I observed were not paying attention. Some were studying independently from other lists of grammar and vocabulary explanations. Some had crashed on their desks, no doubt tired from having been studying lists of grammar and vocabulary explanations until the wee hours of the morning. Most would raise their heads and point their attention occasionally during the lesson to be sure to get the complete list of vocabulary and grammar from that lesson that might appear on the next test, but not necessarily to listen to the teacher or align their motives with hers. You see, they have been trained for how to deal with language that appears on tests with constant streams of grammar and vocabulary explanations, either by university prep cram schools and/or past English classes whose strongest purpose was to get them ready to take and pass tests. They know what they need to “get” for those tests and they can do so very efficiently. That is not to say that they are good at English. Using English is not a priority for them; in fact it is a distraction that they are not particularly interested in (as the teachers at such schools explain).  And neither they nor their parents seem at all interested in rebelling. They just do what they need to do to pass those tests. They are winning this game and they want to keep their eye on the ball. I was there to observe the teacher’s lesson, so we could offer some advice–some tweaks for improvement in delivery or choice of activity or whatever. But what I saw was shocking, and I am not referring to the teacher necessarily. The teacher is just one part of this system, and from talking to many such teachers, I know that they feel haggard and powerless.

I do not claim to have a ready answer to this dilemma, but I would like to point out that it is indeed a big problem–education is being substituted with (and sacrificed for) test preparation. The very kids who could be exchanging opinions with students in other countries, who could be fine-tuning presentation skills in English, mastering digital integration of technology and language, grappling with global issues and identities, and questioning and growing and enjoying the experience, are not. They’re doing worksheets and practice exam questions. Lots of  them. And not much else. Even the content of the textbooks is not thought about or felt–there is no time for anything but those essential grammar and vocabulary explanations, and then it’s on  to the next few paragraphs.

Please don’t make the mistake of thinking this writer is some misinformed idealist who simply doesn’t understand the system. I was in the classroom with 38 bright students, one  teacher, one observing head teacher, and another teacher trainer and I am confident in saying that no one was enjoying the experience. Pedagogically, I can also tell you that the lesson could have been much much more effective. But the problem runs much deeper than a  little pedagogical approach shift can address. In fact, I would call it more than a problem. I would call it a crisis, and a tragedy of waste.

Please give me a few more minutes of your time. Specifically, please give up 20 minutes to listen to Ken Robinson speaking at TED. Just click on the image below, or on this link. I’m not saying that Mr Robinson has the answer either. I think he is  doing a good job of defining a problem with education in the US and UK and probably other places right now. But of course  seeing a problem and doing something about it are different. I have listened to several of his speeches now (including this nice one that is also very worth some of your time) and I am always struck by how I agree with so much of what he has to say, and yet I never like the last few minutes of his talks. They are always disappointing. But let’s not quibble yet. Listen to the talk with an open mind and see if it doesn’t resonate.

There, doesn’t he make sense? Life and education are not linear. Providing opportunities to collaborate creatively and use imagination, opportunities to explore the relationship between feeling and language and meaning, this is what the schools should be doing for learners. Yes, I know the learners need language, they need to see examples, receive instruction, get feedback and correction. But they also need to learn to produce in English, to do so collaboratively and autonomously. And that needs to be built into the system. But fat chance of that. Junior highs want to get these kids into better high schools and high schools want to get them into better universities. And so do their parents. They don’t mind kicking English learning down the road for a few years if it means getting their kid in a high level school. They know the game, too. So that’s why the system doesn’t change–there is no pressure on it to change. Everyone is unhappy, but the stakes are too high. The high schools are now competing with cram schools to see who can do test prep better. That is seriously messed up.

On the weekend I went to see a youth production of Guys and Dolls (Jr). In one song, the straight-laced mission girl finds herself in love (and slightly drunk) and liberated and she sings a fun little jazzy song, If I Were a Bell. The lyrics of the song took on a very different meaning from in the musical when I heard it, however. Instead, I thought about education. As I watched these high school and jr high school kids having the time of their lives putting on a theater production, I thought about the passion, the fun, the purpose, and the camaraderie–all so very missing from the class I had observed 48 hours before. I thought of how brilliant and wonderful they were and how they themselves were responsible for that. And I wished also for those poor students at the shingakkou to be given more a taste of what it is to collaborate and present something that uses language to communicate and delight; to be liberated, not through spiked dolce y leche (the scene before explains…) or the love of Marlon Brando, but through production and communication and purpose. Instead of the slog I witnessed, I would love to have seen them lighting like lamps, waving like banners, or ringing like bells as the kids in the theater production so joyfully were doing.

Ask me how do I feel
Ask me now that we’re cosy and clinging
Well sir, all I can say, is if I were a bell I’d be ringing!

From the moment we kissed tonight
That’s the way I’ve just gotta behave
Boy, if I were a lamp I’d light
And If I were a banner I’d wave!

Ask me how do I feel, little me with my quiet upbringing
Well sir, all I can say is if gate I’d be swinging!
And if I were a watch I’d start popping my springs!
Or if I were a bell I’d go ding dong, ding dong ding!

It’s a nice thought, but I wouldn’t bet on shingakkou learners being given the chance to do anything productive and meaningful in the near future. The system is so totally conspiring against it…