Creating Language Games

Sonja Eisenbeiss & Carla Marciano

seisen@essex.ac.uk @LanguageGames4a

http://essex.academia.edu/SonjaEisenbeiss/ http://languagegamesforall.wordpress.com/      https://childdirectedspeech.wordpress.com/

Overview

Why do language acquisition researchers develop language games?

Student Projects about Language Games: What can you learn from the creation of language games?

A solution for some practical problems: the language games tool kit and resource site

How can language teachers use language games (creation) to support language learning?

Why do linguists develop language games?

We want to study how learners acquire language. We need rich data that are as naturalistic as possible. We do not want to underestimate what learners can do

by looking at the same situation over and over again – for instance by always recording people during meal time with the same food.

We do not want to overestimate what learners can do – for instance by recording them in situations where they can use fixed phrases and sentences that they have heard many times before.

We want to make our projects fun for learners.

How do Linguists Study Children’s Language?

Naturalistic data / spontaneous speech samples: recordings in everyday situationsnaturalistic input or child data, but often lacking relevant

utterances

Experiments: controlled variables, fixed stimuli and proceduresgood control of variables, but often “unnatural” or not

appropriate for younger children

Elicitation games/tasksgames that encourage language usesome control over the words and structures children

use, but still quite natural and fun

An Example: Possessives Children over- or under-use possessive s:

* This is John (=John’s) house. * This is mine’s.

We want to determine the reasons for such problems. We want to support acquisition, especially in

populations with language impairments. Even long naturalistic recordings may not contain any

examples of possessives – in particular if the child is not fighting about possessions with other children.

Typically developing children are too young for production experiments when they produce these errors (around 2 years).

Some Elicitation Games for Possessives

Children have to find matching cards with possessors and their possession (e.g. queen – crown) in a Memory-style game.

Children are given toy characters and their possessions and are asked to find out what belongs to whom. A silly puppet will challenge them and encourage discussion.

Children have to tell another person whose balloon is red in a picture with lots of people and their balloons. The listener then has to colour in the balloons in their own black-and-white copy (see e.g. Koch 2010, Bevan 2010).

Possessives: Naturalistic Data vs. Games

Eisenbeiss (2000): a comparison of 44 naturalistic recordings and 20 possessive game recordings with German children (age: 1;11-3;6). 70% of the naturalistic recordings did not contain a

single possessive. 10.969 naturalistic utterances only contained 29

possessives. In contrast, the game recordings provided sufficient

examples for quantitative analyses. We also found more variety of possessors (not just

mommy’s, daddy’s).

Game-Type I: Barrier or Director/Matcher Games

A “director” describes a scene/object etc. and a “matcher” who is not able to see this scene/object, has to recreate it.

E.g.: The matcher has to build a toy house identical to the one created by the director who is hidden behind a screen.

Bevan (2010): Whose Ballon is red? Two sets of pictures, both with animals that have balloons, one with coloured and one with blank balloons.

Whose Balloon is red? (Bevan 2010)

Whose Balloon is red? (Bevan 2010)

Game-Type II: Speaker/Listener Games

A speaker provides information for someone who does not have access to the information.

Variant 1: speakers retell a story they have heard

while the listeners were out of the room.

Variant 2: speaker tells a puppet that cannot see what

is going on.

Game-Type III: Co-Player Games

All Participants are involved in a game and provide each other with information to co-ordinate their actions.

For instance, players can be involved in a construction or puzzle game.

The Puzzle Task (Eisenbeiss 2009, 2011)

a task with co-players: child describes contrasting pictures on a puzzle board, adult finds the matching pieces, child puts them into the correct cut-out

exchangable pictures and puzzle pieces

can be used to elictit particular forms or to elicit the linguistic encoding of particular meanings

Contrasting Puzzle Pictures (Eisenbeiss 2011)

Broad-Spectrum Tasks

general encouragement to speak Frog Story: a picture book w/o words used to

elicit narratives (Berman/Slobin 1994) Bag Task: a bag with bag for blocks and

animals of different sizes and colours. The bag has pockets that match the animals in colour an have coloured buttons, ties, etc.; and children frequently refer to colours, sizes and locations when they ask other players to help them hide or find animals in the pockets (Eisenbeiss 2009, 2010)

contrasts between colours, sizes, locations, etc.

The Broad Spectrum, Co-Player Bag Game

The game involves a bag with pockets of different styles, colours and sizes for toys of different sizes and colours.

Children refer to colours, sizes and locations when they ask others to help them hide or find toys in the pockets.

Focused Tasks

form-focused: the elicitation of particular forms or constructions, for instance, picture-matching game for the elicitation of noun-adjective constructions (little cow -- big cow)

meaning-focused: the linguistic encoding of a particular meaning that can be encoded in different ways, e.g. my car / Sonja’s car / ? the car of Sonja? In a game about people and their possessions

Stimuli

static (pictures, photos) for object/person properties

dynamic (video, cartoon) for events

realistic displays (photos) for easy recognition, independent of children’s knowledge of artistic conventions (3D, shadows, etc.)

drawings, cartoons for easy systematic variation

The Role of Contrasts

Contrasted elements are more likely to be encoded:

Contrasting possessors (e.g. the panda) in Bevan’s

whose-balloon-is-red-task are mentioned.

However, the balloons do not contrast with other

toys and are often not mentioned.

Student Projects about Language Games

• Motivating students to learn about • properties of their (second) language• communication

• Transferable skills training• Research/analytical skills• IT skills• Communication skills

• Work Placements and Collaboration with Charities

Learning About Linguistic Properties

• What is the generalisation in the target language?

• For instance, when do speakers use ‘s and of?Jane’s leg vs. the leg of Janemy mother’s leg vs. the leg of my mothermy table’s leg vs. the leg of my tableJane’s mother’s father’s dog’s leg

• How complex can linguistic structures get?

Learning about Communication

Raising awareness of language processing and

interaction priniciples (e.g. the role of

contrasts) and people’s motivation to engage in

communication

• director/matcher games

• speaker/listener games

• co-player games

Practical Problems: Creating Games

Creating game materials for each language game•is a lot of work•expensive•needs quite a bit of inspiration and creativity•requires storage space for all those game materials

Practical Problems: Students’ Game Creation

Students face the same problems as teachers.In addition:•They may not have the IT or craft skills.•They will have lots of questions about resources and processes.•You cannot spend all of your time on the practical training, but need to focus on the design and linguistic aspects of the games.

Our Solution: “Language in a Bag” – “hardware”

• fabric-based materials that allow people to create their own games easily:

• a felt mat with a pattern made of Velcro strips• fabric strips with Velcro strips.• clear plastic ID holders• straps or handles from laptop bags etc. • coloured elasticated strings and ribbons• key rings• additional: little pockets with added Velcro strips

(e.g. old jewellery sachets)

Our Solution: “Language in a Bag” – online

• We have created a website and blog, with • readings for game creators• descriptions of games• downloadable materials (e.g. pictures)

• After the launch of our new Centre for Language Development throughout the Lifespan (LaDeLi) on 02/07/2015, we will regularly post patterns, game ideas, etc. for “language in a bag”. You can already see some game materials and descriptions here: http://languagegamesforall.wordpress.com/