The students were shown the initial states and asked to remember as much as possible from them.

The activity used 5 screenshots of initial states from a puzzle game and corresponding screenshots of the same situations with the puzzles solved.

The reasons for doing this were based on the ideas behind Demand High ELT – I realised when exploring this, that the use of this computer game could be used to push students to speak at a higher level than they were doing.

I decided to use a game based on problem solving called Droppy.

They found it boring and difficult – I decided to experiment to see if I could change their attitude and make the activity speaking feel more like fun as well as helping the students to do it better.

I decided to focus on speaking after a class survey showed that these 12 year-olds had problems speaking on their own in English.

With so much of so many people's time and energy being spent playing games, and in a world where educators are worried about declining attention spans of students, video games hint at a way of capturing students' attention and engaging them to learn. There is now a very large body of work relating to what makes games work, and many writers have deconstructed successful video games and written about the components of games that make them work. Another important factor is the massive interest in games design. Video games are now one of the most popular free-time activities for much of the population.

Why digital games? The answer, of course is in the explosion of interest and activity related to video games.

His first book, 'Digital Play: computer games and learning aims' won the 2011 ELTon (ELT Innovation award) for teacher resources, and his second book for teachers, 'Language Learning with Technology' was awarded the HRH Duke of Edinburgh award for ELT book of the year and was short-listed for an ELTon. Using digital games in the ELT classroom to improve speaking fluency Presentation given at the 7the FLA in Montevideo, Uruguay on 11th October 2014 Graham Stanley is project manager for the British Council in Uruguay, working on the Plan Ceibal English project, teaching primary children English via video-conferencing.

 Prensky (Paragon House, 2006) Don't Bother Me Mom – I'm Learning!  Prensky (Paragon House, 2001) Digital game-based learning  Gee (Common Ground, 2005) Why video games are good for your soul  Gee (Peter Lang, 2007) Good Video Games + Good Learning: Collected Essays  Gee (Routledge, 2004) Situated Language and Learning: A critique of traditional  Gee (Palgrave, 2003) What Digital Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy  Bartle (New Riders, 2004) Designing Virtual Worlds  Sykes & Reinhardt (Pearson, 2013) Language at Play: Digital Games in Second and Foreign  Reinders (ed.) (Palgrave, 2012) Digital Games in Language Learning and Teaching “ – Teacher involved in projectįurther Reading: Game-Based Language Learning It also encouraged lots of languageįrom the students. In terms of classroom management, it was veryĮasy to keep on top of the class because they were engaged not just by the It’s the kind of lesson you can make last a bit

Droppy primary games