Using Computer Games to Teach Writing

This short article looks at ways of using computer games to teach different aspects of writing in the foreign language classroom. It offers a number of practical tips for use in the language classroom and beyond. Why games for the teaching of writing? Most written communication now takes place electronically. This is having a significant effect on the types of writing our students produce. Prensky (2003) estimates that by the age of 21, learners have sent 250.000 instant messages and emails. Clearly, our students love to communicate through writing! Of course, our job is to improve the quality of that writing and to expand their written communication to include different text types. To me, one obvious starting point is the writing my students do for fun and to build on that in class. For this reason I have used text messaging and Facebook to encourage social writing. Especially videogames also offer a lot of potential to motivate students to write a wide range of text types. Considering that by Prensky’s estimates, by the age o