ESL Games+

ESL Games Plus or ESL Games+ is an online platform that offers interactive games for learning and teaching of English as a Second Language. The games can only be played online and are most suitable to be used in an ESL classroom to make it more interesting. This website offers a variety of games ranging from those that cover vocabulary, grammar, spelling, to sentences.

There are seven buttons on display at the top of this website - the home button, games button, topics button, quizzes button, videos button, printables button and mobile button. Each of these button will direct you to the chosen section. If you click on the home button, the main page will be on display. On the main page, you can find the description of this website by the developers themselves. You can also browse the popular games section and the popular videos section at the left side of the platform, with the former being on the upper side and the latter on the lower side. You can also identify the different types of games they offer by reading the descriptions of the games that are displayed on the main page.

Next, if you click on the games button, the page that you will be directed to would display the different types of games they have to offer, with each of them sorted into their specific types. Some of the games are classroom games, memory games, sentence monkey (to practice constructing sentences), spelling games, and board games.

The topics button will give you an overview of what kind of topics are available on this website. For example, if they want to focus on verbs they can click on the topics button to see if it is there. It is, in fact, included in one of the topics on this online platform. There is also the quiz button that can direct you to the exercises that you can do to practice your English.

Other than that, there is the videos button that will give you access to the ESL videos. These videos can help you learn more about the English language by using both visual and auditory aids, which makes it beneficial both teachers and learners of ESL. The printables button allows you to print out the interesting worksheets such as crossword puzzles, word search puzzles, and flash cards. The mobile button will direct you to the links if you want to play the games on mobile.

This tool is indeed beneficial for ESL teachers as they provide a more interactive approach than the traditional method of teaching. In a traditional classroom, the teacher is the dominant figure and the students would only listen majority of the time. By using this website, teachers would be able to initiate interaction in the classroom, be it among the students or between the students and the teacher, making it more lively like how a language classroom should be This is because, the games provided on this website can be played both individually or in a team.

This website not only benefits the teachers but the learners as well. Learners differ in their method of acquiring knowledge. Some learners are more visual while some are more auditory. The games in this website have both of those features incorporated into them. While there is no method that could cater to the needs of every students in one classroom, the many interactive, interesting features on this website could at least help the learners learn in their own way without falling behind their other classmates. This tool can also help them be more cooperative in class, develop team work and improve their self-confidence as the games can be played in teams as well.

You do not need to sign up or create an account to access the games, quizzes and puzzles. It is also free to use for everyone. I will be showing the guidelines on getting started with the tool in the form of a self-made video below.

Original Video

YouTube Video