Most people believe that learning grammar takes a lot of effort and is quite tedious and unvaried. This often happens when concepts of the English language are taught in an old and conventional way. Although they have been indisputably working well for years now, don’t you think that it’s time to transpose?
While some may excel in reading, writing, and grammar, some may look for enticing pedagogies that can make them grasp the notion effortlessly. A game-based approach can be evidently befitting for these individuals, as they also ensure a little fun while learning.
Therefore, in this post, we will talk about how games can make grasping parts of speech entertaining and rewarding.
Online game-based approach- How it aids learning english & parts of speech
The game-based approach has been an enticing choice to grasp academic notions due to certain edges like better critical thinking, problem-solving and analytical skills. Apart from these edges, parts of speech online games may ensure some additional benefits. Muhammad Rauuf[1] studied the effect of online game learning for high school students at Arizona.edu. The results indicate that most students viewed the potential utilization and integration of online games as positive.
Here are some noteworthy edges that parts of speech online games can offer:
1. Pragmatic Application of the Regulations
The application of words in reading and writing often obligates the need to retain certain regulations. While all of them are preached in classrooms, assignments, and homework may create monotony. Games-based learning gets handy here by offering learners the latest and enticing ways to apply it pragmatically. In such recreations, players often deal with words and sentences with pictorial representations often facilitating them to link these with real-life entities.
2. Flexibility in learning
Online games can be accessed from phones, tablets, or PCs with active internet connections. As these are often a click away from the learner, they can access at any favorable time. This ensures not only flexibility but also motivation to practice more.
3. Ensures Repetition
While homework and assignments often stipulate the student to write answers on paper, repetition thereby needs additional time and effort. Nonetheless, repetition is facile in online learning games. Once a game is completed, it can be restarted with just a click. Consequently, frequent practice can be secured anywhere.
4. Enhanced Hand-eye coordination
Online games need the player to use their fingers and eyes to comprehend the challenge and act accordingly. Suitably, hand-eye coordination is ensured here, and thereby better cognition and memory.
Ar Rehab[2] developed a virtual reality game for patients with challenges in finer movement. The results showed improvement in finger movement and their coordination with the eyes. These inferences can depict how online games can ensure hand-eye coordination.
Ziyu Yang[3] and the team studied the effect of game-based interactive strategies on young children’s linguistic awareness and engagement. The results showed a significant improvement in the orthographic awareness performance for the group which participated in the hand-eye coordination training.
Cool games for learning parts of speech.
1. Dino Fishing: Adjectives that Describe
The importance of adjectives in a sentence is often now comprehended by students. Dino Fishing preaches the same by letting them identify the right adjective to complete the sentence. For every question, there are four options in the form of dino fishes.
The player needs to choose the right answer by fishing relevant dinofish. The idea of fishing makes it engaging. Evidently, the game looks forward to strengthening the essential reading and writing by focusing on adjectives.
2. Kid Heroes Verbs
This verbs game is easy and student-friendly that helps them to get desired outcomes of learning the verbs in a fun way. In the game, students can learn the verbs or its combination with nouns. Students have to find a suitable verb from the given list, and after selecting the correct one, they can pick a hero(warrior, archer, or healer) to fight with the monster. These characters make the game exciting and challenging for the students.
They have to drag a character they like and place it on the line to play further. When they defeat the monster, it goes to the next level. With notable visuals, the game manages to golf the interest of the player.
3. Prepositions Game
This game aims to help kids in learning prepositions. The game allows them to choose a few settings at the beginning, such as a slow level, review the game, pick the rooms(living room or classroom, and many others). After choosing these settings, you can proceed further by clicking on the start button to begin the game of 9 rounds.
The student has to read the sentence on the screen and drag the matching object to set it in the correct place.
Objects given here are mostly household items that we generally use, making the vocabulary rich. The game mainly focuses on prepositions, and if a student makes a mistake, it gives a hint. The game is suitable for beginners and intermediate students as well. This interactive game allows students to learn prepositions in-depth.
4. Irregular Plural Nouns Match
The idea of the game is to match the nouns with their irregular plural forms. The player needs to drag down the right answer, making it a facile game. When they match the list successfully, the next list appears. Stipulating the player towards focusing on each word, plural forms can be identified effectively; thereby, learning plural nouns turns fruitful.
This game offers a unique approach towards the concept of parts of speech, where the student can learn while playing.
5. Parts of Speech Quest 4: Adverb
Adverbs are often used to modify or quantify verbs, and adjectives. To teach the same, this quest game creates an alternative universe where the player can traverse through. The game starts with character selection and then an enticing prologue.
Once upon a time, a terrible dragon attacked the kingdom of Lingua. It stole all the treasures of the king and took them to its lair, where it sealed it in a magical door. Now, only an adverbs master can retrieve the Orb of Adverbs to unlock the door.
Accordingly, the player gets the chance to win the quest. The game starts just like any other dungeon video game, where the player needs to answer adverb-related questions to progress. Apart from the interface, the enticing background score adds to the interest of the player.
6. Monkey Isle Conjunctions
The game is all about a monkey stuck on an island. It needs to excavate for food to live. A question related to conjunctions is to be answered by the player to get a banana for the monkey. Choose the right answer among the options provided. Pressing on the choice again will submit it. Every correct answer awards ten points. As the player gets 150 points, they can move to the next level.
This simple yet intriguing game can be a good take-in for grasping and practising Conjunction lessons. Being a serene game and minimal graphics, this can be a classroom game as well.
7. Space Dog: Subject Object Pronoun
The player of this game acts as the savior of a space dog. The game needs the learners to answer pronoun-based questions. Every right answer rewards 10 points out of the player and a life-saving bone to the dog. The student needs to score 140 points to reach the next level of the game.
For every wrong answer, the dog misses its bone, while the player’s score stays intact. Being a light game, it can be accessed comfortably on any device. The game ensures learning pronouns is no longer taxing.
8. Putting Apostrophes in Possessive Nouns
Possessive nouns, as the name indicates, show the possession of an object to a noun. For instance: Boy’s. After learning about nouns, students may need to know how to employ them in possessive nouns. Apostrophes make a difference here. Accordingly, this game preaches students to place the apostrophe at the right place in a possessive noun, so that learners can implement them in real life effortlessly.
The game shows a query with a space to fill the possessive noun with the right placement of the apostrophe. Three options are held by three evil monsters, from which one appropriate needs to be selected to move to higher levels. With noteworthy graphics, this game manages to create engagement in young learners.
9. Bango- A game for Plural Nouns
Plural nouns are used to depict multiple nouns at a time. There can be broadly three types of plural nouns based on their endings. They can end with ‘s’, ‘es’, ot ‘ies’. Knowing what a plural noun ends with, will ensure a better grip of learning on it. Bango preaches the same.
At a first glance, it looks like a Mario game with a Kangaroo character. The game has a lot of stones with “es, ”s” and ”ies” on them. When a singular noun appears, the player needs to take the kangaroo to the appropriate rock and punch it to answer and win 10 points. The attention to detail in this game is noteworthy. Another fascinating feature is that it comes in a keyboard and touch screen version.
10. Parts of Speech Sorting
Once the students have learned about various parts of speech, it may be time to distinguish between them and revise. Parts of the speech sorting game let the players segregate a group of given words into nouns, verbs and adjectives.
The game is set up in a library, where there are a number of books with a word written on each book. Players need to identify the word and put them in the right bowl (adjective, nouns, or verb). This sorting game being simple manages engagement with a large number of words to practise with.
Conclusion
At last, we all want our children to learn the English language efficiently, but if they have a fun learning experience, that’s even better. As we all know, many kids dread the grammar part of the language. They’ll study the main topics and leave other topics as they find them boring.
The point here is to change things, and games can help us change the scenario of that conventional classroom learning. Using these games additionally as an effective learning tool to make students learn the parts of speech is great fun.
References:
- Universitas Tidar. (2020). Digital Native Students’ Perspectives of Online Games Use for Learning Grammar in English Class at Avizena.Edu Private Course. Muhammad Rauuf Oktavian Nur. https://doi.org/10.30605/jsgp.3.1.2020.236
- A novel approach in rehabilitation of hand-eye coordination and finger dexterity. (2011). Y. Shen.
- Interactive Games for Improving Pre-school Children’s Linguistic Awareness: Design and Field Application. (2011). Ziyu Yang.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,