Playing Games in Beginning Latin: PANCIERA (con't.)

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Despite my best attempts to vary my presentation of the grammar, the exercises for homework, and the activities in class, Latin was going over like a lead balloon. So in desperation I decided to develop a few games in an attempt to shake the students out of their lethargy. What follows is a report on some of the games I played last fall or am in the process of developing, as well as some observations about the pedagogical value of including games in introductory Latin.

I must admit that, trained on the straight ahead, no-nonsense approach of Wheelock, I was leery of using valuable class time on something that sounded so frivolous. But recently I read the following passage by Quintilian about the importance of play and games in education:
All pupils must be given some relaxation, not merely because there is nothing that can stand perpetual strain – even unthinking and inanimate objects are unable to maintain their strength unless given intervals of rest – but because study depends on the good will (of the student), a quality that cannot be secured by compulsion. Consequently, if restored and refreshed by a holiday, they will bring greater energy to their learning and approach their work with greater spirit of a kind that will not submit to be driven. I approve of play (lusus) in the young (it is a sign of a lively disposition) nor would I ever believe that a child, who is gloomy and in a continual state of depression, would show alertness of mind in his work, lacking as he does the impulse most natural to children of his age. Such relaxation must not however be unlimited: otherwise the refusal to allow a break will make boys hate their work, while excessive indulgence will accustom them to idleness. There are moreover certain games that have an educational value for children, as for instance when they compete in asking questions of each other back and forth taking turns (Quint. Inst. 1.3.8-11).
There is undoubtedly much we as classicists can learn from modern educational theorists and cognitive psychologists about the value of using games in our teaching, but it is gratifying when one of our own is so sensible and ahead of his time. Quintilian confirms my own observations that games help to relax students, improve their mood and alertness, and are especially effective at creating an active learning environment.

One of the best games I played last year was “Simon Says”. I came in one day after about the 4th week, greeted the class in Latin as I always do, “salvete discipuli”, but then kept going in Latin: “Salvete, discipuli. Hodie vobiscum volo ludere ludum, appellatum/nominatum “Simon dicit” aut “Simon imperat.” Demonstrabo. Ego, magister, dico “Simon imperat: tangite vestrum caput” et vos, discipuli, debetis tangere vestrum caput. Si non dico “Simon imperat”, noli facere aliquid. Intellegitisne?”
Simon imperat, “tangite caput vestrum.”
Simon imperat, “tangite nasum vestrum.”
Simon imperat, “tangite dentes vestros.”
Simon imperat, “tangite capillos hominis/amici proximi.”
Simon imperat, “tangite oculum vestrum dextrum.”
“Tangite genu vestrum dextrum.”
Eheu – non dixi “Simon imperat.””

There are a number of obvious virtues to this game. First, it drills the imperative in a new way and by playing a game where they must listen intently for it and then act on what they hear, they remember it all the better. If I were playing this game for the first 10 minutes of class I would run through a number of verbs so that they could hear the difference between the conjugations. It’s also a nice game to play because it heightens their state of alertness right at the beginning of class. There is also a real benefit in getting them to act a little bit foolish in front of each other. Students feel somewhat naked and vulnerable in a beginning language class and they often make mistakes. The truth is they all have to take risks and make mistakes in order to progress in their learning and the group foolishness that a game like “Simon imperat” inspires is good for accelerating this process. In addition, it’s nice to have an excuse to teach them the words for the various body parts early on. No Latin textbook I know really does this, and I am always having 1st semester Latin students beg me to teach them the words for the body. I used to think this was because of their experiences in studying modern foreign languages where such vocabulary is typically introduced early on, but then I had 2 daughters and I realized that naming the parts of the body is a basic human fascination.

Although I only played this game on 2 occasions last year fairly early in the semester, theoretically you could bring it back once you have covered the hortatory subjunctive and part of the challenge would involve students knowing whether they had truly heard the subjunctive form of the verb, or whether it was simply the indicative. Thus the trigger for winning the game would be correctly identifying when the subjunctive was used, rather than simply listening for “Simon imperat.”

The next game is something that I actually didn’t play last year, but which I am developing now. It is a Latin version of Boggle, the popular word game in which cubes with different letters are shaken in a box made up of a 4X4 grid – the players then must find words made up of contiguous letters. The challenge in playing Latin boggle is that you can’t just use the normal configuration of the game as you would find it in the store. I needed a way in which I could rewrite the cubes with letters, such as the personal endings of verbs or case endings of nouns, more important to Latin words. So I have asked the computer science dept. at Gustavus to develop a programmable version of Boggle that would allow me to change the letters on the cubes. This then could be played by students on the computer. Here is a layout of my board:

Note that it is a 5X5 grid, which allows for a little more flexibility. For this game I rewrote the cubes so that they might form a number of verbs, with different tenses and endings, that we have seen by the end of chapter 20 of the OLC. I am anticipating that students could play this outside of class to sharpen their recognition of verbs, and that we could play it in class once in a while, perhaps with overheads of boards. Part of the game could also be having them translate or identify the forms they find.

I wanted to try this game simply because I always loved Boggle and found it addictive. Since the cubes contain individual elements of the verb – prefixes, roots, tense signs, personal endings – I am hoping that students become more alert to the importance of seeing these constituent parts and understanding what information they convey. We all drill this stuff, but it is amazing to me to see students who are moderately successful in Latin still getting personal endings wrong months into the course. Perhaps this game could help. They also tend to not see the relationship between verbs that use the same root but different prefixes and again this game could improve their ability in that regard. Since the letters on the cubes can be reprogrammed, I can create different versions of Latin boggle depending on whether I want them to drill verbs, nouns, or even small words such as adverbs and prepositions.

My final game was not something I initially thought of as a game, but in the end it shared many of the same features as the first two activities. Last fall, my colleague Eric Dugdale and I wanted to have our first year Latin students start doing some Latin composition early on. We wanted something more interesting, however, than the English to Latin sentences the Oxford Latin Course had in its exercises. So we taught them the basic formal elements of haiku (mostly the 5-7-5 pattern of syllables) and had them create poems based on the summaries of the Aeneid they had been reading in their textbook. Our initial idea was that the haiku form would demand the sort of concision that is often one of the most difficult aspects of Latin for beginning students. Here is one of the best poems we received:

DIDO
iam fumus surgit;
amor Didonis errat
tristis ad caelum.

Not only did students enjoy this free composition much more than translating sentences from the book, but the haiku form also taught them a number of important lessons about Latin poetry. First, the concision of the verse form got them out of simply thinking in English and then translating into Latin – it forced them into a more Latin frame of mind. And the haiku form tends to create ambiguity that is finally only resolved in the last line. This delay in understanding is a characteristic of Latin that, in my opinion, gives students particular problems, but it is something that the poets loved to play with. The students swiftly saw how this worked and they really enjoyed creating haikus where the images and ideas did not jell until the last line. And they started actually enjoying the fact that Latin adjectives, because of their endings and the fluidity of word order, could create greater complexity and depth of meaning as tristis does here. Does it go with fumus, amor, Didonis, or all of them? What had once been only an infuriating aspect of Latin (“Why does Latin do it that way?”) was now seen as a strength of the language and I doubt that I could have taught them that in any conventional way.

In conclusion, let me offer up an idea on what connects these three activities and what makes playing games in general a good use of class time. First they change the dynamic around from one of work to one of play, from the grammar-translation mode, which is necessarily our primary means of teaching Latin, to something more creative and interactive. Such occasional relaxation, as Quintilian suggests, is important for developing a positive attitude on the part of the students, and ultimately he is right – they are going to learn Latin best when they enjoy it. But what really interests me is the reason why these games are fun. I would argue that the fundamental element of any successful game played in a language class is that it shifts the student’s attention from the language to the game. Understanding the language must still be as important as it is when they are translating the passage from the textbook – they cannot play and win Latin boggle without knowing their endings – but suddenly they are intent on the game and they use their Latin almost unconsciously.

In honor of Cecil Wooten an analogy from the gymnasium is fitting. I work out every day on a stair master. It is designed to give me a similar aerobic workout every time and in that respect it is effective. However, I mostly hate it, because though I am watching my favorite soaps and listening to the greatest hits of Madonna, I can not get my mind off how much I am sweating, how out of breath I am, and the dull ache in my limbs. Once in a while I play racquetball instead. Even though I play for twice as long, and my heart rate goes just as high, I absolutely love it. My focus is on the game, not the work.