Collaborative Games require groups of participants to utilize teamwork and spoken communication to complete a shared challenge. They are primarily non-competitive in nature, with each team either successfully completing the challenge together or failing together. As as result, they promote teamwork, cooperation, and productive communication.
These activities have a clearly defined end goal, but each member of an activity team has a different portion of the information needed to successfully complete the challenge. Therefore, successful completion of the task requires all team-members to communicate some of the needed information to the rest of the group.
This type of learning exercise is an example of an information-gap activity, which is one of three types of activities within the task-based language teaching (TBLT) methodology.
Information-gap activities engage language learners in tasks that require authentic verbal communication for successful completion. Unlike traditional TBLT activities, which have typically been designed for intermediate and advanced learners, many of the exercise listed below are suitable for beginners and near-beginners. Many TBLT information-gap activities necessitated extensive prior knowledge of the target language. This often left beginners at a disadvantage, unable to reap the benefits of these instructional strategies.
However, the activities listed below are specifically designed to utilize only the vocabulary and sentence structures presented in the instructions. As a result, even complete beginners can actively participate in these activities. The essential vocabulary can be learned quickly or provided through a cheat sheet if students have not yet memorized all the necessary terms. This approach empowers beginners and near-beginners to engage in authentic communication in the target language without requiring months or years of preparatory study.
