Autora: Verónica Amaro Bermejo
Learning a language is usually difficult. Your brain always tries to filter things that it doesn’t understand, so you have to really pay attention to remember what you hear.
By the other hand, raditional methods of education no longer work because they are designed for students to be fundamentally passive.
Gamification can help you with your English. Earning rewards releases dopamine in your brain, which makes you feel happy and helps you learn. You feel more motivated to continue and to focus. It also makes you forget about the difficulty that we mentioned before.
Students don’t need more textbooks. When education is boring, there is no learning happens.
When people hear the word gamification the first thing that comes to mind are points that you earn, badges and levels.
But, what Is Gamification?
First off, let’s clarify the term “gamification.” It simply means to game mechanics and game elements in a non-game context. It helps to change people’s behavior and adds a playful spirit to some boring and routine things.
There are some of the most popular gamified apps from the e-learning sector:
Tinycards: it is a gamified educational app for learning with flashcards. It makes learning with boring old flash cards actually fun and enjoyable through the use of Gamification.
Memrise: is a gamified language learning app that utilizes gamified techniques to teach a new language. Players can learn English and many more languages.
The app is incredibly fun to use. You are an astronaut, going on your journey to learn a new language! As you learn and progress, you gain in levels and your pet alien evolves as well.
The fun of Memrise lies in two things: memes and gamification. The app follows a learning method that relies on creating funny or bizarre associations with the studied words. The memes are created by the community and everyone can add their own! Both earning, revising and creating memes is a source of points that help you advance in the Memrise world.
Mindsnacks: this app takes gamification to a whole different level. Each out of seven languages they teach comes with eight or nine tiny games are designed to help you learn vocabulary, grammar, practice your listening.
The design is very enjoyable, cheerful and charming and it really helps to stay involved with the learning.
The basic download is free, but it comes only with a restricted number of games. If you pay a little bit you can access more lessons and widen your game options.
