A good question for anyone trying to do something new is simply:
“Why?”
With all of the countless books, journals, magazines, conferences, and online resources available to today’s English instructors, why did I feel the need to make yet another thing, and attempt to justify yet another teaching technique? The answer is simple: Because I saw a need.
The need to provide students of English As A Foreign Language (EFL) with an interesting environment to practice speaking and interacting in English. I don’t think the “Foreign Language” aspect of EFL can be emphasized enough here. I teach in South Korea. It’s not like my students are going to walk out of class and immediately find themselves in situations where knowledge of the English language is super handy. In fact, one of the safest assumptions in all of EFL is that students almost never use English outside of class. This is especially pertinent in East Asian countries like Korea, Japan, and China. And yet many EFL students crave an engaging and lifelike environment in which to practice English. So, how can we provide EFL students with this kind of environment?
I believe that, for many instructors and students, using tabletop role-playing games for second language acquisition can meet this need.
Tabletop English seeks to provide resources for teachers and scholars who are interested in using tabletop roleplaying games for second language acquisition. With that in mind, here are the two goals of Tabletop English:
- To provide language teachers with the needed resources to engage their students through tabletop roleplaying games.
- To provide scholars interested in this field with a place to discover and share research.
5 July 2021 – Paul T Johnson
(originally posted 1 January 2020)
an interative process 