Journal of Foreign Language Education and Technology

Board Games as Content and Language-Integrated Teaching and Assessment Tool for EFL Students in Taiwan

Abstract

Gayathree Mohan* and Rajeshwari R

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) teaching and assessment is extremely challenging because it isn't easy to assess content knowledge and language proficiency simultaneously. Assessing students of varying proficiency levels requires careful differentiation and consideration and finally, most CLIL programs are experimental, so their methods, materials, tools for testing and evaluation, and Teachers’ Training Programmes (TTP) are scarce. Board-games have been successfully used as teaching/assessment tools measuring content and language to varying levels easily, becoming excellent course materials for CLIL courses. A foreign teacher designed board games for CLIL, English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) course in a Taiwanese university called Books and Newspaper taught to senior students in the physics department over a 14-week semester. It was extremely challenging to develop listening, speaking, reading, and writing (LSRW) skills of Taiwanese students who only spoke Chinese throughout their university life, so the foreign teacher used board games as course materials when she taught the same EMI course to a new set of 21 students. Boardgames increased learning effectiveness and drastically increased the receptive and productive skills of learners creating efficient realization of course objectives than the iteration without course materials seen in the attendance and participation of the learners.