We Speak Kiingereza 

Want to read more? We Speak Kiingereza has been featured in the media and presented on at a conference!

• Teaching English in Tanzania Through Games by Kevin Lavery, MSU College of Communication Arts and Sciences

• Game developers, professors present benefits of gaming for language learning by Reiel Ghiglia, The State News

• Cross-Cultural Design to Aid English Instruction in Tanzania and Kenya: A presentation on how co-design drove the game forward in Kenya, presented at the 2025 Play Make Learn Conference.

How to Play

Players or teams take turns rolling the dice and moving along a path. They encounter ten checkpoints where they must stop and complete a language learning exercise. There are both easy and hard exercises, with a correct "hard" answer allowing access to a shortcut. There are also "Mystery Cards" that provide power-ups. The first one to reach "The End" is the winner!

Want to learn more? Read the full game rules, or try it out yourself on Tabletopia!

Testimonials

"For once, the students are actively engaged in the lessons."

– A secondary school teacher in Kenya.

"Getting students to do their reading is a problem. This (game) will encourage them to do it."

– A secondary school teacher in Kenya.

"When can we play the game again?"

– Too many playtesting participants to count!

Key Takeaway: Involve context experts as early as possible to ensure you start out on the right track.

Key Takeaway: Keep testing, even if something seems to be working.

Phase 3: Kenya (August 2025)

I was fortunate to receive the opportunity to travel to Kenya for two weeks to continue testing and developing this game, plus to evaluate a tablet learning platform called Mind Leap, thanks to generous funding from the Mozilla Foundation.

Working with teachers to start the co-design process early this time.

Based on feedback from testing the Portuguese game, I presented five new types of learning exercises to teachers in Kenya, including listening and fill-in-the-blank.

I had the opportunity to work with both a primary school teacher and a secondary school teacher.

Leading up to the visit and following playtesting, teachers suggested ten more types of exercises, bringing the total to 16. Suggestions included reading a full paragraph and open-ended questions about literature.

An additional change leading into the visit was to decrease the distance between checkpoints so players spend more time practicing the language than just moving along the board.

A novel idea to increase flexibility and reduce costs.

A colleague, Kennedy Nyoro, suggested removing actual questions from cards and instead only printing the question type. Teachers could use external resources for questions, allowing an essentially infinite question pool with minimal printing.

The primary school teacher opted for this while the secondary school teacher still prefers questions directly on cards. This is important: tailor the game for each classroom so that it best meets their individual needs. It also allows for quicker and easier scaling and distribution, while retaining the option for a more hands-on, personalized approach.

What I learned about co-design from the teachers.

A few things stood out to me from working with these two teachers, who had different approaches:

• Translation is not part of the curriculum at all! This exercise was removed for secondary schools, while the primary school teacher felt they were still fun and chose to keep them.

• It's important to build relationships with co-designers to let feedback flow comfortably. The secondary school teacher was comfortable giving feedback from the start, while the primary school teacher was initially open about some feedback but took more time to give feedback in other areas.

Lots of great insight.

Students were able to understand the rules and format quickly by playing the game, although there were issues with the written rules so they were therefore simplified.

Important context about class structure led to some changes:

• Classes are 40 to 45 minutes depending on the school. While students generally wanted the game to last longer, time in the classroom is tight. A one minute time limit to answer questions was imposed. However, if a wrong or delayed answer is given, other teams should have the opportunity to answer and move forward if correct.

• There are 50 to 60 students per class, and teachers prefer groups of ten students. This means five or six game copies are needed to accommodate each class. Additionally, to avoid overcrowding, the board size needed to be increased.

Young students can be co-designers too!

An interaction issue dating back to the original version in Tanzania has been players wandering off the set path. Each phase saw attempts to correct this, but the issue persisted. Specific questions were included in the playtesting protocol to collect design suggestions from participants to resolve this issue.

Additional research insights, and what to explore further.

The cutoff for the version of the game tested is age 7 – younger kids did not understand the game and were not engaged. New card types were created to focus on and appeal to younger players, but I have not yet had a chance to test this. I'd like to test both exclusively with kids age 6 and under, as well as with kids in this age range playing alongside older children.

Another focus of the research was on gender dynamics. I found that neither gender was more assertive than the other within teams, instead the team leader (whether a boy or a girl) tended to be whichever player was oldest or the best at English. The big difference was how boys reacted to losing the game when playing against other boys compared to girls playing against other girls. While the boys on the losing team got quite upset, the girls moved everyone's pawns to the end and declared "everybody's a winner." This dynamic is something that warrants further research – are there ways to "lessen the blow" of losing the game for boys?

Additionally, students are also interested in playing and learning at home. While copies can be sent to homes, how will response moderation be handled without a teacher present? This is something else for further research.

Key Takeaway: Probe deeper to understand contextual details (such as class sizes) you may not see in a test setting.

Future plans and possibilities for this ever-evolving project.

In addition to testing the game for other non-language subjects (although you still must know English for a physics class in Tanzania, so you're learning English either way!), since returning from Kenya I have received additional feedback from a language expert to foster deeper learning through the game:

• Include a debrief to be included after playing, allowing students to reflect and share what they learned each time they play.

• Add additional layers of complexity. For example, if you name an animal, what are some ways you can describe it beyond just its name?

As noted in the project introduction, 40% of the world's population receives an education in a language other than their mother tongue. With the game's flexible design, I am excited to try exploring it in other contexts in addition to expanding it in its current ones. The game has shown great promise thus far to unlock creative learning and reduce educational barriers. I'm open to collaboration on this, so feel free to contact me if you're interested in exploring it together!

In addition to continued work on the game, I am currently in the process of analyzing the research data from Kenya and writing both a research paper and an academic poster.

Key Takeaway: Maintain relationships. Updates down the road can still benefit earlier audiences.

My Role

We Speak Kiingereza was developed as a solo project, however there were many co-designers and supporters who contributed to it in big ways that I would like to acknowledge.