GREEK LINGO BOX: Back to Face to Face? Myths about Language Games and a Fresh Idea for Board Games
Speaker: Ifigenia Georgiadou (Hellenic Culture Centre, Greece)
Abstract
The paper presents 15 myths about language games and communicative playful activities in a language classroom and debunks them. It refers to the value of games in our teaching and presents a new Erasmus plus project within the framework of which twenty language games will be produced between 2025 and 2027 in the classic format of board games with a dice, pawns and cards, ready to bring to our classrooms the joy and excitement of the group that plays and enjoys the moments of learning, while at the same time uniting through the laughter or suspense that a classic board game causes, and in fact brings them into contact with the culture and living traditions of the country whose language they are learning. This is one of the elements that attracts students and allows them to truly feel the country and its language. The real games that we all play with our friends bring us into contact with our emotions, arouse our interest, integrate us into the team, and teach us many cultural elements without teaching them to us in an academic way. Digital games have replaced playful activities in our classrooms for a few years now, but they have not managed to sufficiently revive motivation and activate emotions, as well as restore the sense of belonging to a team, elements that GREEK LINGO BOX promises to do.
Bio
Ifigenia Georgiadou is Director of the Hellenic Culture Centre (www.hcc.edu.gr). She studied at the Department of Philosophy of the Faculty of Philosophy of the National University of Athens and completed her postgraduate studies at the Transnational Postgraduate Program “Education and Human Rights” of the Universities of Athens and the University of London, Institute of Education. She has been teaching Greek as a foreign language since 1979 to adults and children, and exclusively to adults at the Hellenic Culture Centre and elsewhere since 1995. She has received further training in theatrical techniques in teaching and Adult Education. Author of five books on teaching of Greek as a foreign language. Teacher trainer, teacher of Greek to non-native speakers, human rights trainer. Certified Trainer of Adult Educators and trainer evaluator (EOPPEP). She is a founding member of OSMOSIS-Center for Arts and Intercultural Education and coordinator of European research educational programmes for Greek as a foreign/second language and Intercultural Education. She had served as a member of the Board of the ICC.