A card game designed to teach English pragmatic markers

In this paper, we describe the development of Mind You!, an educational card game currently in development to engage learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) to learn English pragmatic markers. Pragmatic markers, a study of pragmatics refer to individual words or phrases that provide the hearer context clues about the intended meaning of a speaker during conversation. Learners competent in the pragmatics of a foreign language can interpret intended meanings of native speakers thus developing cross-cultural understanding. Despite this, pragmatics has been given little attention in ESL classes due to lack of teacher training and suitable teaching materials. Mind You! is currently being developed as a supplement for teachers to use in ESL classes for teaching pragmatic markers. The development of Mind You! used a research through design approach which involved three case studies and three brainstorming workshops. The case studies examined how the rules, instructions and aesthetics of three existing card games engaged ESL learners in oral communication development. Thematic analysis involved determining common themes found in observations of learners playing the games and interviews with them about their learning experiences. Findings included providing equal opportunity for learners to practise the language during social interaction, card visual aesthetics containing relevant information for language learning and simple scoring system. The brainstorming workshops were conducted with game designers to conceptualise the rules, instructions and aesthetics of Mind You!. The three brainstorming workshops also informed three design iterations of the card game. Each iteration consists of rules, instructions and aesthetics designed differently for learners to practise using pragmatic markers in sentences within social interaction and language play.