Foreign language class uses interactive game to learn language.
By Saif Sarfani
MOUNT BERRY, Ga. – Test reviews and technology go hand in hand in one Spanish classroom at Berry College.
Assistant professor of Spanish Julia Barnes facilitates a language-learning game with her Spanish 200 students called “Kahoot.”
“You can go and create questions and then you can either set it up as a survey or a quiz,” Barnes said. “In my Spanish classes, I’ve done it as quizzes where they have to select the correct answer. I have used it as a review and it’s pretty fast.”
Barnes said that she likes Kahoot because it shows the grade distribution of the class and the top five scores, but not individual scores. According to Barnes, students who are not doing well in the class can figure out what they need to study and it rewards those who perform well.
Freshman James Humphries introduced Barnes to Kahoot.
“Back when I was in high school, we used to play Kahoot a lot,” Humphries said. “We really tried to base our class on various things instead of sticking to one type of classroom instruction. So when Ms. Barnes asked us if there was any new, more exciting ways to learn Spanish, I told her about it and she had one of her higher-level students working on creating sets for us to play in class.”
Humphries also said the game is a productive tool because it shows competitiveness and students’ eagerness in answering a question right.
Sophomore Camille DeBrun is in Barnes’ Spanish 200 class.
“We usually play it before a test and I think it’s a fun review day,” DeBrun said. “It actually quizzes me; it’s all vocabulary. It’s really easy to access; we all do it on our phones.
DeBrun also said that Kahoot is all in Spanish and has a very traditional setup including multiple-choice sets.
After a question is presented, students have a visual cue, like a corresponding picture or video, and four answer choices from which to choose.
“We usually just match the word that fits the definition [or question],” DeBrun said.
Barnes said playing the most recent test review game of Kahoot in class was different than before.
“The way the questions were set up [today], it tricked them a couple of times and that made a learning moment,” Barnes said. “One question [where that happened was]: ‘True or False: You need an expired passport to travel to another country.’ No one in the class figured out what the word ‘expired’ in Spanish was, and because of that everyone put true, and they all got it wrong. So this was a teaching moment to point out ‘How do you say expired?’ [and] ‘How do you say valid’?”
Though Barnes said she could not attribute Kahoot to better performance on tests, she said she thinks it is just one tool among others that is helpful for test reviews and teaching moments.