Using Escape Rooms to Improve Pre-Service Teachers' Communicative Skills in English as a Foreign Language

Introduction

Pre-service teachers’ training is paramount in ensuring an education of quality in modern societies. The role of teachers of the 21^st century involves the ability to work as a team and collaborate with colleagues, perform different roles and assume responsibilities where necessary within an institution, among others (Jaca & Javines, 2020). In this context, it is necessary to have good oral and written communication skills. These skills are in turn a pre-requisite for effective teaching.

With the entrance of Spanish universities in the European Higher Education Area and the increasing interest in learning and teaching foreign languages, pre-service teachers struggle in order to achieve an acceptable B1/B2 level in that language, as prescribed by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRL, Council of Europe, 2001). Having a good command of English will enable them not only to finish their degrees successfully, but also to have more labour opportunities and mobility around the globe. Moreover, if English is the language of instruction, they will need to be proficient enough to help their future students develop language skills.

However, pre-service teachers’ communication skills are challenged when they practice teaching since they do not have enough competence and confidence in speaking a foreign language. Traditional methodologies of teaching English, with the focus mainly on written skills and on the learning of grammar, seem not to fit their necessities (Gómez, 2019). Students are demotivated and feel anxious to speak in front of an audience. Some studies have revealed that demotivation, anxiety and lack of confidence may hinder foreign language learning (Meshkat & Hassani, 2012; Rifai, 2010; Zhu and Zhou, 2012).

Moreover, academic learning contexts based on mechanical tasks, with little connection to the real world, where students just sit in classes listening to the teachers, do not seem to help improve the problem (Cruz, 2019b). Therefore, there is a need of implementing new approaches and teaching methodologies that foster active learning, where the teacher acts as a mediator or facilitator, and the student takes an active role in his/her learning process (Fernández, 2006). In this respect, educators should spark innovation within the classroom and be open to experiment new teaching and learning roles and spaces (Merchán, 2017).

In the last decade, there have been many research multidisciplinary studies devoted to proving the benefits of gamification in teaching and learning environments and, particularly, the use of escape rooms in these educational contexts has become very popular in the last few years (Clarke et al., 2017; Foncubierta & Rodríguez, 2014; Kinio et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2018,). Due to their innovative, funny, dynamic and amusing character, many educators from different areas of knowledge have adapted escape rooms as a strategy which enables the creation of game-based learning conditions to acquire curricular content.

Therefore, the aim of the present chapter is to implement an escape room to improve pre-service teachers’ communicative skills in English. As mentioned before, pre-service teachers need excellent communication skills for their professional practice. Developing these skills is sometimes hard, especially when English is the medium of instruction and they do not feel competent enough in that language. Thus, practicing English in a ludic and relaxing context may help reduce students’ anxiety when they have to express their ideas and thoughts in a foreign language.