Reviews of
"Edutainment:
How To Teach Language
With Fun and Games"
Edutainment: How to Teach Language With Fun and Games. I.E.Hewitt. Language Direct, 1996, Pp.96. 3,400 yen (tape incl,). ISBN 0-9586492-00
Edutainment: How to Teach Language with Fun and Games
Hewitt, I.E. Language Direct 1996 Teacher's book with photocopiable exercises, 92 pp., plus 1 cassette. ISBN 0 9586492 0 0 current special price: 3,400 Yen
Edutainment is a 92 page book with accompanying cassette of games and well-known songs for use in the EFL classroom. It is essentially one teacher's stock of well-tried material during his teaching in junior high schools, colleges and companies over a period of five years. As such, one might be forgiven for an initial reaction of "Well this is already in almost every teacher's repertoire!" Not so:
Not everyone has had the time, opportunity or indeed inclination to collect a ready-to-use stock of games and songs and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of busy TEFLERS who are not blessed with well-stocked resource centres with this sort of material, in their place of work.
It would also be an insult to the author to dismiss this publication as mere replication. There are the old favourites such as Snap, Hangman, Chinese Whispers, Bingo and Scrabble but the author gives step by step instructions for the novice teacher and sensibly permits photocopying of exercises and songs for classroom use. I was impressed by some of the crosswords, particularly the "Jigsawed" versions. Again, not new in concept for promoting communication in the classroom plus....., but very time-comsuming to prepare well and so a very useful ready-to-use aid.
All the games, if not completely applicable to one's immediate teaching situation, provide a basis for other ideas and/or adaptation. Likewise the songs, which are essentially cloze (vocabulary) exercises, could be adapted to a variety of levels/degree of difficulty, depending on the situation. They are all well-known and "middle of the road" enough to suit all age groups and nearly all nationalities (there may be some cultural content one might wish to avoid in some situations).
In short, Edutainment would be a handy additional resource in any TEFL situation and highly recommended for the novice teacher or for TEFLERS who have little or no access to support materials.
Copies are available from: Language Direct, 4th Floor, Igarashi Building, 6-1-28 Shimo Meguro, Meguro Ku. Tokyo 153. Telephone/Fax 03 3710 3946.
Review by TEFL Professional Network
REVIEW : Edutainment
Edutainment is a book developed for use primarily with junior and senior high school students in Japan. As the title suggests, it contains conversation - based games and activities aimed at educating and entertaining the learner at the same time. Edutainment contains 18 photocopiable language - based games and activities plus 17 music close activities.The author says that the book was developed over 5 years of teaching junior high school and college students. Though it has been put together with these levels in mind, clearly many of these activities can be modified to suit other levels. All of the activities and games have straightforward instructions and are easy to set up. In addition, many of the activities can be used in conjunction with certain grammar points.
Looking at the list of games of activities in the table of contents, one may note that some of them are old favorites, while others sound only vaguely familiar. After using Edutainment with high school and junior college students, it can be said that all the activities do work very well. Used as a resource, Edutainment provides ready-made fun activities which are sure to spice up any lesson.
Reviewed by Ron Hearne
Komae High School
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