Serious game _ Third world farmer

I played the serious game. According to Wikipedia, a serious game or applied game is a game designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment. The "serious" adjective is generally prepended to refer to products used by industries like defense, education, scientific exploration, health care, emergency management, city planning, engineering, and politics.

I chose Third World Farmer. It helps students experience some of the hardships of farming in a poor country. This game provide us the opportunity not only to know the English language but also to think about poor countries’ farming conditions including unexpected bank corruption, lack of basic necessities, disasters people would encounter or economic disadvantage. It means that this game is designed not just for language learning. Through this game, students are able to think about the poor countries and difficulty of farming besides the language learning.

I have played this game three times. The more a student plays games, the more he can get more points to buy utensils or farm plants. Clicking the person or items, students can see the details of the picture they clicked. The instructions and explanation are provided and students can buy necessities for their farm. Reading the instructions, students can learn vocabulary and expressions about farming and economy.

In addition, in the end, it provides ‘annual report’ including data such as plant they put or items they bought. The most interesting thing is that they also provide the information about some natural, social or political reason for the farming result this year such as bankruptcy, big fire and so on. Through this annual report, students can expand their vocabulary knowledge and be aware of some natural or social phenomena around the third farming country.

With regards to my learning objectives, I have chosen Michigan English Language Proficiency Standards, especially for reading and comprehension, R.5.2.c Restate facts and details of text. According to Kyle Mawer's task types, I can assess ‘story telling’ including narrating a game story or writing the narrative of a game. As an activity, I would like to have students play this game first, and then, have them to write what they did including the expression they’ve learned in this game. In addition, they are supposed to write about the reason why their farming was not successful reciting the reason presented in the ‘annual report.’