Video Games in EFL

Video gaming is one of the most exciting technologies that can be integrated into an EFL classroom for students and quite a few teachers and, unfortunately, only a small number of parents. For this reason, the teachers are faced with a task of choosing a game that would provide learning opportunities for the students, reliable data for teachers to assess and safety margins for parents to be excited about the outcome of such technology integration in an English language classroom.

Sims is a great example for this purpose.
Activity idea: Tell students to decorate a sims room, give them a text about a description of a room, ask them to analyse the essay and create a similar room. When the room is finished, ask them to bring a screenshot of the room and present it to the class. Grade the student on the fact of including the details from the essays in their virtual rooms. For example, in the essay it says “...in the right corner I have a TV on a stand, with a couple of my favourite DVDs next to it...” the student would need to have a room that is similar to this, easy for the teacher to assess the vocabulary.
This should mostly work at lower levels of English proficiency.

And there’s nothing for parents to worry about, the only possible concern with the game is the scene of mild sexual encounter that some sims characters may have, which was rated PG-13.