A casual game: Sound Factory

In Sound Factory you play a role of a bored worker who wants to please his co-workers by making music from the old factory machinery. You need to unlock all the instruments in the limited time, in the meanwhile, you have to finish the work quota and turn off all the items when the boss is coming. I played the little game over ten times but stuck by the level three since it has a bug. My co-worker's satisfaction degree just stopped after the boss came and gone. I could not unlock items if they were not happy. Anyway, students would love to get involved in the game since creating music is really interesting, especially when they can keep unlocking amazing instruments. No matter you are an adult or a child, you will have much fun.

In the game, the player need to understand the instructions to pass the level. When the boss is coming, the player need to stop all the instruments quickly. If failed, the player also need to read the instruction to find out which part was not completed so that he/she could play better in the second try. Every instrument has a name, such as "Radio", "Whistle", Xylophone", etc. The students are expected to remember all the names of the instruments. According to Maryland Content Standards for Adult ESL/ESOL(p.11), the reading indicators of low intermediate ESL/ESOL learners can be: apply simple context clues to determine the meaning of new words; comprehend simple and compound sentences in authentic materials; identify main idea, chronological order, and simple transitions in texts on familiar subjects. The grammar indicators include future tense, present perfect tense, adverbs, conjunctions and so on. Therefore, I think Sound Factory is suitable for the low intermediate level or above.

The teacher could teach the words in the game. For the game itself, it is simple enough. Students should not have any problems to pass the levels. However, for the low intermediate learners, they might have questions about the names of the instruments. I will teach the prefixes, suffixes and the roots when teaching words. For example, the root "xylo" of "xylophone" means "wood"; and "phone" can indicate musical instruments. The students can remember the word easily once they understand the root. Then I will provide some words with the same root, such as "saxophone", and introduce a new instrument "water phone". Also, I will use the images from the game to teach vocabulary since students are familiar with them in the game.

Although I believe the walkthrough is not crucial for the game, I would give some tips to help the students. One tip is that you can click on the instrument's icon at the bottom to toggle them on and off immediately.

To assess whether the learning objectives had been met, I will give the students orders to see if they are able to response correctly. For instance, the students need to compose the xylophone when I say "xylophone"; when I say "stop the tea cup" they need to do the same thing. When the students are familiar with the vocabulary, I will show them the images of the instruments and ask them to say the words. In addition, the students can practice the simple past tense by telling what he/she did in the game. They may say "I composed the mouse choir, and then I turned on the radio..." For the higher level, the students may use some conjunctions to make it more clearer. The open-ended exercise will ensure every student has something to say.