Designing escape game activities for language classes

Escape games are an increasingly popular leisure activity involving a group of players completing tasks to achieve a pre-defined goal, which is usually escaping from a room. In this chapter, I briefly outline the educational potential of escape game activities in language classes within the frameworks of gamification, pervasive learning, and ‘serious games’, and in relation to transferable skills. This is followed by a description and evaluation of an escape game I developed for a grammar class on the idiomatic uses of German modal verbs. This was piloted with a first-year undergraduate class at Lancaster University. I conclude by discussing student feedback and considerations for similar activities in the future.