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One of the projects that we work on over at CASLS is the Games 2 Teach website, which serves as an online gathering of curricular resources and professional development opportunities involving the intersection of games, pragmatics and language learning. For teachers, keeping students motivated and engaged in the target language can be a very daunting challenge, but games have been proven to lend themselves very well to this end. Like any kind of authentic material, however, games can be effectively used to complement teaching a particular language feature, or they can be an unproductive distraction depending on several factors, such as the content of the game, the acceptance of the students, and the scaffolding of the teacher. Games 2 Teach strives to provide helpful resources for teachers so that they can make informed decisions about which games would be appropriate to use given their particular context. Some of these resources include:   

• Reviews of popular games based on their relevance and suitability for L2 teaching and learning
• Classroom materials for L2 learning activities using widely available games in Chinese, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish
• White papers and academic-level working papers on issues related to digital game-mediated L2 teaching and learning
• A manual for L2 teachers and education professionals on evaluating, designing, and implementing game-enhanced L2 learning activities
• Announcements of summer workshops on digital game-mediated L2 pedagogy

In their most recent blog post, Games 2 Teach discussed some of the advantages and challenges of using Never Alone: Kisima Inŋitchuŋa, winner of the 2015 ‘Games for Change’ award. The game itself is essentially an interactive fable of the Iñupiat people, where players guide a young girl named Nuna and an arctic fox that becomes her companion on a journey through the Alaskan tundra. The blog post discusses several aspects of the game from various angles, but most importantly brings up some best practices for using this game in the language classroom. One point that stands out from the post is to be aware of cultural values and the inherent world view of the target culture. While Never Alone gives great insight into the ideology of the Iñupiat people, an instructor has to be mindful not to bundle everything taken from the game as a comprehensive depiction of the culture. Rather, the teacher should have the students compare and contrast the cultural values found in the game with their own. If you would like to read more about best practices using Never Alone: Kisima Inŋitchuŋa, click here. We would love to hear your input on your experience with using games to teach. Write to us at info@uoregon.edu, follow us on https://twitter.com/CASLS_nflrc, or like us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/casls.nflrc.