Teaching is Life is a Game by By Visnja Anic

reviewed by Mario Rinvolucri, UK

Published by Skolska Kniga, Zagreb, Croatia 2007

Visnja writes:

“This mildly educational resource book is meant for foreign language teachers who work with students of any age group. The book offers communicative activities which make young and adolescent learners consider issues of life they rarely think about, formulate and justify opinions, categorise, link, rank or eliminate things, compare attitudes or learn new contents. There are activities which sensitise the naturally self-centred young learner to other students’ opinions as well as activities that help learners show their hidden potentials. There are also things to do that make adult learners revise some long forgotten aspects of their lives, last, there are challenging language games that turn the classroom into a buzzing and productive beehive”

To acquaint you with the structure Visnja has given the book, here are her seven main chapter headings:

1. The socialising factor
2. The factor of introspection
3. The emotional factor
4. The factor of challenge
5. The factor of self- revelation and self-assertion
6. The factor of togetherness
7. The factor of relaxation and fun

A thing I really like about this book is the variety and freshness of student voices introduced to illustrate the exercises.

One sub-section of “The Emotional Factor” is Early Childhood Memories. Students are asked to write about “my favourite place to hide as a child”

Sara, a 12-year-old wrote:

When I was five I otkrila sam a place behind the sofa in the living room. It was about one metre from the window. There was nothing there, just a lamp and a radiator, so it was very warm and quiet. I still like skrivati there with a book.”

Sometimes the student text Visnja offers us is fun, light and humorous like the following one based on the model of the UK children’s books Mr. Happy, Mr. Messy etc….

“Mr. Rag”

Mr. Rag lives in a garage all the time. Sometimes he hangs on a peg, sometimes he lies on the shelf and sometimes he falls on the floor and nobody helps him up. He is oily and wet all the time. He hates it. One night he runs away. He runs and runs and comes to a village. A group of children find him. “What a beautiful rag!” they say. They tie him to a stick and now Mr. Rag is Mr. Flag. He is very happy.

( Ivy 13 years of age )

Visnja draws on many different exercise types that have come into EFL over the past 30 years. So, for example, she offers teachers of teenagers simple values clarification exercises that came into EFL with Friederike Klippel’s book “Keep talking”, CUP, in the 1980’s. In one such exercise the class brain-storm criminal offences on the board. The students then list the crimes in order of vileness. Here are lists produced by two of Visnja’s teenage students:

Visnja also has many exercises which will excite the side of you that focuses on language per se rather than the whole person of the student. Here are two ways she suggests you might cope with a course book passage:

A.

1. In preparation translate a few key sentences and/ or phrases from the passage into mother tongue.
2. In class, ask your students to skim through the text.
3. Read one of the sentences in mother tongue - they have to shout out its English equivalent ..etc.

B.

Your students read the text and then ask them to copy out the sentences.

1. Which convey negative information
2. Which they agree/ disagree with
3. Which describe physical things
4. Which contain an adverb
5. Which they think the most informative

To sum up my impressions, I find this a both inspirational and workwomanlike book which I feel should be on the shelves of any humanistically inclined primary, secondary or adult teacher. It is the result of 30 or more years of deep thought and wide classroom experimentation. It would be marvellous if the Croatian publisher were to make the book more widely available by allowing a larger house world publication rights.

Note from Mario
I have to admit that I have followed Visnja’s professional development since the 1980’s and so cannot claim to be an aloof or dispassionate reviewer. If I were you, I would blame H L T’s editor for asking me to do this review!

Please check the Methodology and Language for Primary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.